How Do You Trust Again?

A first-time founder asked me a question recently that took me back about twenty-five years.

How can I ever trust anyone again?

He had every reason to ask.

He had gone to an incubator for help. They matched him with a mentor. The mentor eventually joined his company, invested, and then tried to take control of it.

An actual attempted palace coup.

The founder caught it and kept his company, but only after spending an enormous amount of time, energy, and money defending himself against the person who had been brought in to help him.

Think about that.

How many things can go wrong in a startup?

You can run out of money. Your product can suck. Customers may not show up. You can hire the wrong people. You can build something nobody actually wants.

And apparently, while you're trying to survive all of that, you also need to watch for a coup from your fucking mentor.

Welcome to entrepreneurship.

But the attempted coup wasn't what stayed with me.

It was what happened to him afterward.

He told me he couldn't really talk to his wife about the company anymore. It had become too overwhelming for her.

So now he was carrying that too.

The company.

The betrayal.

The fear.

And the realization that someone he trusted enough to let into his company had tried to take it from him.

Then he asked me:

How do I trust anyone after this?

I knew exactly what he meant.

Because I've lived it.

The Flight to California

Years ago, I built a company.

This was before I had successful companies behind me. Before I had money. At the time, this was it.

I had a wife.

Two young boys.

Bills.

Responsibilities.

And a company I had poured everything I had into.

I took in an investment.

Then I was out.

No company.

No money.

Just lawyers I couldn't afford trying to help me get back some piece of the thing I had nearly killed myself creating.

That changes a person.

It changed me.

I just didn't realize how much until recently.

So, I did what you do when you have a wife, two little boys, and not enough money.

Whatever the fuck I could.

I found some consulting work in California, packed a bag, and headed to the airport.

As I was getting on the plane, my wife told me she was pregnant.

We were having a third child.

Unexpectedly.

Excellent timing.

I had just lost the company I had nearly killed myself building. I had lawyers I couldn't afford. Two young boys at home. Not enough money. And I was getting on a plane to California because I needed the work.

Now there was another baby coming.

That was a fun flight.

I had about six hours to think about all of it.

I don't remember staring out the window contemplating the meaning of life.

I remember thinking:

Okay. Figure it out.

Because what else was I going to do?

There were about to be three little boys depending on me.

So, I figured it out.

I worked.

I built again.

Eventually the companies started working.

I made money.

I created the security I didn't have sitting on that plane.

And somewhere along the way, I made myself a promise.

Never again.

Nobody was ever going to come in and have enough control over something I built to put me, or my family, in that position again.

What Never Again Became

Some of what I learned was useful.

Read the documents.

Know who controls what.

Know who can remove whom.

Don't confuse somebody investing in you with somebody believing in you.

But never again eventually became:

I'll do it.

If something was important, I wanted to be involved.

If someone else was handling it, I wanted to know exactly what they were doing.

I thought I was protecting my companies.

And I was.

But I was also protecting that guy sitting on the plane to California.

The crisis ended.

The trait stayed.

That's the really fucked up thing about getting burned.

The fire goes out.

You keep living like something is burning.

And control worked.

That's what made it so hard to see.

I built successful companies. I created financial security. Nobody was ever going to put me in that position again.

But eventually I became responsible for everything.

That's why I understood this founder when he told me he couldn't talk to his wife about the company anymore.

Your wife asks how things are going.

Where do you start?

The investor?

The employee?

The cash?

The lawsuit?

The attempted palace coup?

Fine, honey. How was your day?

When you don't trust anyone else to carry some of it, you carry all of it yourself.

I got really fucking good at that.

Until about a month ago, when my body decided we needed to discuss the arrangement.

It scheduled the meeting in an ER.

I've written about my little sleepover there already. No need to drag everyone back into the hospital with me.

The important part is that it made me look at how I was living.

I'm still me.

I'm just trying something different.

• • •

One of the first things I did was finally renew my passport and go somewhere I love.

There was something strange about being somewhere else in the world while the companies I had spent years believing required my constant attention were somewhere else.

And they kept running.

I checked in.

Of course, I fucking checked in.

We're talking about progress here, not a personality transplant.

But I've started giving people real responsibility.

Not responsibility where I delegate something and then stand six inches behind them waiting to take it back.

Actual responsibility.

And somehow things are getting done.

Imagine that.

Which has given me more time.

Apparently, I've decided to use all of it to write.

A lot.

I've had more than one person point out that perhaps I'm writing too much.

And perhaps a little too personally.

Fair criticism.

The problem is I don't know how to write any other way.

And I really don't care.

I like writing about the hard things.

I'm an Aries, after all.

Subtlety was never going to be the fucking plan.

What Getting Burned Actually Taught Me

But somewhere between telling the internet things normal people probably keep to themselves and discovering that my companies can survive without me for a few hours, I came back to his question.

How can I ever trust anyone again?

I think I finally understand what happened to me.

I thought getting burned taught me not to trust people.

It didn't.

It taught me to control everything so I wouldn't have to.

There's a difference.

And that worked for a very long time.

It helped me build companies. It helped me create the security I didn't have on that flight to California. It made me very good at figuring things out when things went wrong.

I'm keeping all of that.

What I'm trying to lose is the idea that I have to carry everything myself to protect it.

So what would I tell this founder?

Don't trust everyone.

You shouldn't.

Do the diligence.

Talk to people who know them. Better yet, talk to people who used to work with them.

Read the fucking documents.

Pay attention.

But eventually, when the right people show up, in business or anywhere else in your life, you have to find the courage to trust them.

And then you have to do something that may be even harder.

Let them in.

Paul Harkins