Startup Chaos, Dropbox Disasters & 25 Problems Later: How We Keep Going

So, uh, first of all, I completed the task. Yes, I'm waiting for your next task. Um, but as for the problem— yes, sorry, um, I need you to go into Dropbox and, um, organize this situation because I need to create— I need that internal link created for EM because she hasn't uploaded them. She had no idea.

There is the link created, but the Dropbox one is Guess we just discovered Dropbox has fucked it up. She did. So, back on. I'll come back to you. So on the topic of yesterday, I still have not resolved Dropbox. It's going to be an absolute living nightmare for me. Luca discovered we had an issue yesterday. It is now Thursday morning, 10 AM. I still don't know what to do. Reached out to support. I'm waiting on a response. However, we're just going to have to hack this as fast as we can to keep the team flowing. I will sit down in about half an hour to give you an actual proper update for what happened yesterday evening and this morning. Until then, Fingers crossed.

Is it an automation?

I don't know, man. It's just a fucking problem. She's done a famous initial zero.

I've actually genuinely done an initial zero. This time it's working for real. Yeah, that one did it.

So that's a simple task of literally just cross-checking. So we finished off yesterday on a great note. We took positives out of what was a really big awesome day. Lots of falling forward, lots of positive news from clients and from our team. Did note, if you watched yesterday's video, that we had some technical difficulties, and those technical difficulties still exist. We've restored everything that seemed to be lost, so what was lost is finally found. However, I feel like someone's just opened a filing cabinet and just like opened every file and then Fish Eats and Gigs just kicked every file too. So I am tasked with the fun job of sorting it. Pretty sure I created the mess anyway. Part of being a startup and not knowing, you just make mistakes and you got to be responsible to clean it up. I think we've got to the bottom of it, so from here on in I'll just update you later on on how many hours that actually takes me to resolve. Hours that I don't have, but a task that I must do because the team can't flow can't work without it. So not looking forward to it, but it's just part of, part of getting it done. But yeah, it feels like yesterday and today just steamrolled into one big-ass day. It doesn't feel like it's a new, new morning. Our team is flowing better, which means that we have more automated workflows. Every day we're finding a 1% improvement. Our co-founders building out these awesome question sets which allow us to streamline and really fly through our daily mundane, boring, repetitive tasks. So we're an awesome team where we ask questions, a lot of them, and if we figured out how to document it and use that data so we only have to ask it once. So he's working on that for us at the moment. That's a really big goal. And then some of our extended team are also working on building some new tools. So we're really excited, albeit a really big workload to manage. That's Emma, Emma the Maremma. This is, uh, Jean-Luc's my work half and she is my farm half. We've got lots of halves. She joins us once or twice a week and keeps us company and keeps us accountable. Thanks, see you in an hour. Like, we are so fucking on. That was a fun start. Let's put that one there and you here. Some of you have asked me about my outfit. Um, you've made the jokes of, do you only have one shirt? Do you just have like 100 of the same shirt? Are you feeling okay today? Who do you think you are? All these questions are valid. I cover that topic of why I wear the same outfit every day in this video, so you can press here and you can actually find it. But right now we're not talking about why I only wear the same clothes every day. What we're talking about is the awesome day that we had. So we're going to get to it. You're going to leave me with questions, I'm going to give you answers, and we're actually going to see how today went. So let's go! And this is Emma. Emma features in all my videos. We live together. I don't have kids, so she's— I take her to work, I take her on the farm. And not only am I the corporate cowboy, but, uh, yeah, she's a big part of what I do. So really grateful that I get to, um, have her wherever I go. She's the one solid thing that I've got, so it's really important that I maintain some consistency outside of the same clothes every day. Sorry, back to you. Hey, welcome back to another video. This video talks about where we started this morning and the problems that we'd faced as a team, as an individual and then with some of our systems. I've just made another video describing the technical difficulty that we had, how I was at fault, how I owned up as like a leader, but also what I've learned from my mistakes. So I share that with you in that video, so you're welcome to watch it and hopefully you don't face that same problem. The day went exceptionally well. If I look at yesterday and I look at the progression, I can only thank God for the speed at which things are happening and the understanding that we're developing as a team and as a culture. I couldn't be more I'm grateful. How do I feel? I feel absolutely excited, also extremely nervous about what's to come. Day by day, we find that we keep doing the same work. It's the same boring, repetitive, mundane shit that none of us want to do. It drives me crazy, but I know that the magic we're looking for is in that work. I know that the one way to get to the end is to actually do the work day in and day out, no matter how I feel, no matter how we feel as a team. We always rock up and always get it done. It's not an easy task all the time, but for the most part, our team is consistent. We're a group of people who just want to be the best, hey Emma, and are so willing to keep working at that until we get there. So I am feeling blessed, I am feeling grateful, I'm feeling absolutely hammered, and I cannot wait for tomorrow to do it all again. I got asked today, so what did you solve today? The real question is, so what problems did people create? That you're going to try and fix. I never have solutions immediately. Solutions don't always exist. In an ideal world, we'd know our mistakes and our shortcomings before we made them. In any part of life, if I knew the answers to a lot of this stuff, and I can relate this to a marriage, to a relationship, to a test, anything in life, if we knew answers, a lot of us would avoid some of the difficulty we find ourselves in. The real question here is, as issues presented themselves today during the workday, What did you, JP, and what did you guys as a team do to resolve them? And as issues arose and problems arose, did you just keep getting through them? Did they stop you during the day? So that's what I really want to talk about. Every day at work, a number of problems arise. Half of them I make. I'm the, I'm the main reason. The other half is luck or people. It's fine. On this journey of growing, on this journey of startup and trying to be the best— come back here, girl. Oops, Emma. Come. On this journey of like trying to be EB and trying to be our best versions of ourselves, we're going to make mistakes and we're going to have lots of problems. Those problems give chance. Those problems give space. Those problems give life to solutions and to critical thinking. And so what I'm learning to develop as a leader and an individual is how can I share the skill of critical thinking in the most distilled simple way that anyone on the team can learn this habit? How can we adopt a behavior that allows each individual to think critically about their own work and about their own actions before they seek the help of others? Because that means, hey, when I put my hand up for help, I have already done my best, and my best means I've already QC'd my own work. It means I've already double-checked my own work. It means I haven't just said, screw this, it's hard, someone come and help me. It means I actually need your help because I've done everything that I can as an individual Don't touch the mic, he's saying. Okay, sorry. When I put my hand up as an individual for help, I now know as somebody in charge of their wellness, not just in charge of them, but in charge of their wellness and well-being and their productivity. As somebody in charge, when a team member puts up their hand and asks for help, it is my role to help them. But also because my time is valuable and my time resource is scarce and limited, I must ensure as a leader that they have done everything possible on their own time to troubleshoot that issue. And so the skill of critical thinking is something that we could all develop. We have a lot of videos coming up that actually talk about how to develop critical thinking as an individual and how you can spread that belief, because fundamentally it's a way of being, onto a team, how we distill it and simplify it so anybody can learn how to critically think, and lessons learned along the way in critical thinking. But all this is to sum up. So Corporate Cowboy today, when he had lots of difficulties and challenges Did you solve them? How? Yeah, we solved them. How many? I don't know, 25? You know what, I'm going to count tomorrow. The more interesting part is we also made another 50 on top that we will resolve today and tomorrow. And as long as we keep on making problems and resolving them, that is the part of life that we cannot shy away from. That is where people live in the fear of failure. They are not willing and they are afraid. And I sincerely believe this. To make 25 mistakes, to make 100 mistakes. At Empire Blueprint, we sincerely believe, and it's our brand philosophy, that there are no such thing as failures, that we fall forward and every time we pick ourselves up and we learn from them. So yes, we made lots of problems. Yes, there was lots of issues, and thank God we found all the solutions. And I can't wait to do that again tomorrow because that is where growth lies, and that is where the fear of failure dies. It's, it's somewhere within there. So I talk about that in other videos because it's such an important thing for me as an individual, overcoming my own fears of failure and my own fears of like, is this going to work and am I good enough? Once again, thank you for giving me the opportunity, and I really hope that this was time well spent, that it resonated with those of you who needed to hear this. And all I can do and all I will keep doing is sharing with you how I'm feeling in the most rawest way possible. I believe that there is strength through vulnerability, so it is my job to keep doing that in a respectful way, in a way that would resonate with you, but also tell you about the wins we have, not just the losses, and not just glorify the wins, but really tell you what it feels like and what it looks like a day in the life of somebody trying to take something that was just a conceptual idea that was nothing, and you transform that into something. That process there is beautiful. That process there is tiring. It is challenging. It's rewarding. And in my eyes, it's a life well lived. As always, till next time, in the words of Steve Jobs, stay foolish.