Satellites, Motivational Speakers, and Failure

On my way home from Lincolnton yesterday, I spit hot coffee all over my dashboard.

Moments earlier, a broker I was talking with said, "Man, everything you touch turns to gold!"

Cue the spitting of coffee and laughter on my end.

Clearly, this guy doesn't know me.

Because I have failed - plenty of times and in many hilarious and disastrous ways.

But I don't care.

Failure isn't all bad.

Approached carefully, failure can be good.

It's all in how you react to it, and as I see it, you have two options:

Option 1:

I did X.

X did not work.

I suck at X, and I'm no good, and I shouldn't even try things like X.

Option 2:

I did X.

X did not work.

What can I change about doing X so that X will work?

If X simply won't work, what lessons can I take from X and apply them to Y so that Y will work?

The guys' comment, though, got me thinking about some of my failures, and I remembered the time I fell into an MLM television business called The People's Network, or TPN.

At the time, I lived in a rundown house in the ghetto in Greensboro. I was unemployed, having failed miserably during my semester off at a job selling vinyl siding and replacement windows door-to-door.

My friends came over one day to find me installing a satellite dish and running wires to the TV in my bedroom.

"Satellite TV!" they said.

"Hell, yes! But why are you not running it into the living room where we can all watch it?"

"This ain't for watching football," I said, "it's a business."

I told them about it.

They laughed.

I got upset - somewhere between offended and embarrassed.

But, looking back, I laugh, too.

Because what I'd bought into was about the silliest and most absurd thing that a twenty-year-old, out-of-work, and out-of-college kid could do.

Here's how it worked.

The satellite received one and only one channel: TPN.

The programming was all motivational.

Each night around 7:00 PM, it was as if the self-help section of a 1980s bookstore came alive in my bedroom.

"Unlock your potential!" said the host of one show.

"Achieve your destiny!" said another.

"You can have it all!" said yet another.

The secret?

The process for unlocking my potential, achieving my destiny, and having it all?

Can you guess?

That's right. Selling satellites and motivational programming about selling satellites.

Classic pyramid.

I'd started strong, but my excitement soon faded as I realized that I'd been swindled.

I canceled the service and chucked the satellites and promotional materials in the garbage where they belonged.

It was an expensive lesson.

But a good one.

Because I never got caught up in another multi-level marketing scheme again.