Humans crave stories about the hero’s journey — the rough and tumultuous beginning, the breakthrough middle and the triumphant end. Those are the tales humans like the best. Rocky II wouldn’t be the most popular movie in the franchise if Balboa beat Creed in the first bout. People don’t want to dwell on the failures.
But in business, the failures are just as crucial as the successes. The heartbreak, the long hours, the panic, the gambling it all on one big idea and the moments of self doubt where maybe the minimum dime gig at Kinkos isn’t so bad because the rent is past due and there’s a Sons of Anarchy extra towing the car out in the parking lot because it belongs to a bank now.
Most profiles chronicling the rise of a successful entrepreneur gloss over the failures. The starts and stops, high and lows, launches and crashes of business before leading up to the idea that stuck take up minimum real estate on the page — a scant mention, maybe even a HEADLINE 2 callout if a juicy quote fits the narrative. Rarely do the failures get speaking lines past the second act.
“I learned so much,” successful person X will opine in reflection on the early days of the busts before the one business that went boom. It’s sad that few at the top realize those failures are as important to the growth of other entrepreneurs. Failing on their own is important but studying the failure of those who broke through. Does anyone not want to see the first draft of Catcher In The Rye or the early iterations of Facebook?
Steven Junio launched his startup, MyPrecisePack, in 2014. Besides fitness, Steven always had an interest in the inner workings of the working world. He wanted to see and read everything about launching a business.
“I remember when I was just starting up,” the 24-year-old Junio explained, “and browsing business website and online communities just looking for advice on starting from the ground up. All I ever found were vague answers. Never any honesty.”
Around the same time, Junio’s eventual partner Ryan Sullivan was also itching to try his hand at entrepreneurship. He finally listened “to the voice in the back of my head” and quit his corporate job. The now 25-year-old dedicated all of his time to an innovative product for the travel clothing industry.
“I needed some sort of income to take my project further,” Sullivan remembers, “and it wouldn’t hurt to have another person to bounce ideas off of and learn from. I found a listing online that Steve posted for MyPrecisePack.”
After a months of collaboration, Junio and Sullivan — along with friend and amateur bodybuilder Trevor Nathan — came up with an odor free t-shirt called Buffer. The shirts have been tested and came back as 92% odor-resistant when placed in a confined area with ammonia. With a proven product in place, the trio launched the Buffer Kickstarter campaign in early April.
To compliment the Kickstarter campaign, the three men launched the Youtube channel Success Or Bust. The guys post daily videos to document the internal struggles of starting and launching a product.
“I figured people should see what really goes on for an average business,” Junio stresses, “It’s not all of the flash people read in the media. We didn’t raise hundreds of thousands of dollars, we don’t have MBAs and we didn’t start with ANY connections. We literally just decided to start businesses, took the leap with no safety net, and just did it.”
“I personally know the struggle of running a business,” says Junio. “It’s HARD. I’ve had more ups and downs than I can count. I’ve been in moments where I feel everything is going downhill. I’ve been in the moments where I feel I’ve finally made it. It’s just way too real.”
Maybe these videos aren’t just for other people to learn from.
Chris Illuminati is a senior editor with BroBible. If you feel your personal story deserves to be told, reach out to him here.