Overcoming The Fear of Failure, The Art of Entrepreneurship

As I reflect on my recent trip to Capitol Hill with Walmart to speak about US manufacturing and rolling out nationwide in select Walmarts last week, I can't help but feel the work has just begun. We are now going up against the biggest brands in the world in the 2nd largest traded commodity in the world, coffee. Writing this is therapeutic for me, and I hope it will be helpful or insightful to anyone who reads it. Maybe it will help you answer the question, is fear holding you back? I want to share a little bit about my upbringing and journey to where I am today before touching on what I believe is one of the traits that defines an entrepreneur: overcoming the fear of failure.

I did not have a business background before starting Fire Department Coffee . I did not have much of a business plan at all. I grew up in a Christian home. My mom was mostly a stay-at-home mom, and my dad was a hardworking, self-taught engineer. 

I remember working on my car as a teenager with my dad. I was complaining about a fast food job that I had at the time, and my dad told me something that stuck with me throughout my adulthood. He said no matter what, always work your hardest and give your best because you will never see the opportunity in front of you if you don't. Like many moms, my mom always told me I could do anything. Although I believe everyone has strengths and limitations, I appreciated my mom's confidence in me. Although I knew I wasn't the best at a lot of things, I believed I could figure most things out and work hard to be the best.

Before I left the military, multiple senior enlisted men told me about all the challenges in the civilian job market. While testing for fire departments, numerous people told me how hard it was to get on a full-time fire department. When I started Fire Department Coffee, multiple people told me it was dumb and would fail, including my wife, who was the reason I fell in love with coffee. I also would not have been able to do it without her support and care for our three children while I worked a full-time job and grew a business. I want to be clear on that. I share this because none of this phased me until the stakes increased.

The hard work was paying off, but the risks were growing, and the stakes were increasing. I was faced with the need for capital to support the needs of a rapidly growing business, and I had zero knowledge of this. I passed up a multimillion-dollar offer to sell the business while still a firefighter. The stress of sleepless nights between being a firefighter and trying to figure out the challenges of a rapidly growing business was weighing on my family. I had to ask myself why I was doing this. What should I do? The job was not done, and the mission had just begun. So I kept on.

Pushing and grinding, multiple battles won, I was learning and growing, and so was the team. We were getting better and attracting people who shared the vision to join us on this journey. I needed to decide to either sell the business or leave my job as a firefighter after 12 years and the security that came with it. With uncertainty and a better understanding of the risks that come with a business after some of the early battles we had faced, this was a hard decision. 

I had to ask myself why not. What would be the reason for me not going all in? It could not have been more evident that the time was now. The answer I kept finding was fear—fear of giving up that security, losing it all, and failing.

My hesitation was built around the fear of losing it all. I needed to trust in my purpose. All the things that took place and the doors that were opened to get to where we were. It could have happened a million different ways. I went into business pretty blind after learning some of the things that I learned. It was not easy, and there were multiple times the business could have failed, but all things continued to work out for the better, and we were growing and getting stronger in the process. This was not by my design, and I needed to trust in the process and look at the good work that we were doing.

Fear can consume you if you allow it. It will also hold you back from the other side of the door that you will never see if you let it. I have learned that there are some things you can control, but there are many that you can not. We can mitigate risk as much as possible, but don't waste time worrying about the things you can't control.

We can't take any of it with us when we die, and we are only on this earth for a short time, so if you do good work for the right reasons, why should we allow fear of failure to get in the way of progress? We all fail sometimes, but are we learning from it and moving in the right direction? I encourage everyone not to let that be a barrier to achieving their goals. Let's build each other up and inspire others through our work. If you are like me, I know my journey has only just begun.

Many Blessings,

Luke