I saw a wonderful quote by Seth Godin today:
“The real startup costs are the missteps, errors and learnings that every new project goes through on the way to success.
“They’re not mistakes. They’re part of the deal.
That reminds me of the most painful moment in my own coming-of-age as an entrepreneur.
In 2017 I hired an individual to sell our newly built software product to NHS hospitals and to the independent sector. Let’s call him ‘Bill’.
Bill came with super credentials.
He had sold literally billions of dollars of software into hospitals and healthcare facilities. He was the hottest salesman on the planet in the very sector into which we were trying to sell.
He had a contact list to die for and was well versed in the difficulties of the enterprise sale. What’s not to like?
Well, that turned out to be a good question. There was something about him that I didn’t quite like. I couldn’t really put my finger on it.
He was affable enough, although he smelt of cigarettes most of the time, which wasn’t a great sign when selling into healthcare.
He dressed nattily enough – although he reminded me strongly of Private Walker.
The best way of describing my overall feeling is that I felt mildly anxious during my interactions with him. It wasn’t a strong signal, but I strongly recall this in retrospect.
At the time, however, I reasoned that salesmen must necessarily be a bit spivvy. As a combination of doctor and computer nerd, what did I know about sales?
Over the next few months, I received plenty of evidence that Bill was doing a fine job. He phoned me regularly and updated me with his visits, his contacts and his progress talking to various IT departments and heads of clinical departments.
He sent me spreadsheets showing how much activity he was undertaking. He was going to bring me into a demo just as soon as he’d laid the groundwork. There was a good deal of exciting news.
Sadly – you probably will have guessed by now – all this this turned out to be a lie. Whether Bill was just snoozing in bed, watching TV or down the bookies with my company’s money we shall never know.
What was clear, after some investigation, was that the spreadsheets were fiction. His company email account was nothing but tumbleweed.
It contained precisely zero outgoing mails and nothing but a bit of spam in the inbox.
The hospitals he purported to have spoken to, or visited, had never heard of him. Partly because the people he had been visiting were figments of Bill’s imagination.
All the names were fabricated.
As a result, Bill tore through several thousands of pounds before I realised he was a crook. A good proportion of our seed funding had been wasted. It sickens me, even to write that.
The good news – and there is some – is that I learned two important lessons, which I am now offering to you. Whether offering these lessons is a benefit, only you can tell.
But if it saves you the pain of hiring a small-time criminal, it will have been worth it.
The first lesson, I have already written about: Trust and Verify
The second is that my gut knew all along that I should have walked away from hiring this guy. And I use the word ‘gut’ because my head – my reasoning – told me it was OK.
The scientific evidence is growing that the gut and the brain are closely linked in decision-making. The enteric neural plexus has 500-miIlion neurones and is described as a ‘second brain’.
The problem is that most people, including me, have been trained to think that their brain – which is to say the rational element of the brain – is better at decision-making.
The philosopher and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist points out eloquently in his books The Master and His Emissary and, more recently, The Matter with Things, that this is propaganda put about by the brain itself.
More specifically, it is the left hemisphere that believes, erroneously, that it’s always right and can take the better decisions.
In contemporary western society, McGilchrist suggests, we are in thrall to the notion that reasoning, rather than intuition is better.
It’s untrue. He provides some excellent examples, including that of Franck Mourier a racehorse trainer with an extraordinary record of success as a tipster. This is his story.
The lesson here is that we will make better decisions (and if McGilchrist is right, make a better world) if we get better at listening to our gut.
Here are a few adages that might help:
– If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
– If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.
– If you’re not sure it’s right, then it’s probably wrong.
For my part, I’m much better at reminding myself of these snippets. I’m also much better at forgiving myself when I can’t give a reason for taking a decision that only feels right.
Hiring Bill was a costly error, but in the long run it may not have been a mistake.
I’ve learned an important lesson about how to listen to my gut. And that’s part of the deal.
