A childhood memory of losing electricity shaped the speaker's fear of failure. His father believed great products sell themselves, but the speaker learned that even excellent work requires active selling and marketing to succeed.
I was afraid of being poor. My parents, I mean, I remember having our electricity shut off in our house because my father couldn't afford to pay the bill and he had nobody to go to. And I always said I wouldn't let that happen to me. So I was truly afraid of failure because my father worked his butt off trying to be successful and never quite figured it out. You know, he was all about building products and figured people would love his products if he built them. And what he didn't realize that even those great products still need to be sold. You know, there's that movie, Field of Dreams, build it and they will come. What I learned is they're not coming unless you make them come. And that's what I've done in my whole career.
