Lindsey Ivie: [0:00] The biggest failure in my life would be failing my kids, so it just didn’t seem to matter. As hard as that was to shut the doors—and we decided just to let that happen—I felt even more questions in my life, like, “Am I really focused on what matters? How can I create more balance in my life and not get fully sucked into things that are consuming my whole life?”

Joe Grover: [00:27] You’re listening to The Real F Word, a podcast that dives deep into the realities of entrepreneurial failure, and each episode features raw, unfiltered stories from founders who’ve navigated both the highs and lows of startup life. We’ll discover the lessons learned and the strength found in facing setbacks head on. Welcome to The Real F Word. 

Joe Grover: [00:47] Lindsey, welcome. So excited to have you here today.

Lindsey Ivie: [00:50] Thanks for having me.

Joe Grover: [00:51] And I’m excited to unpack some of your personal experiences, both as a marketing leader, as a consultant, and as an entrepreneur trying to build something. And then, finally, you’re putting together a really interesting event. So we’re going to talk about all those things in the next 45 minutes.

Lindsey Ivie: [01:08] Yes, sounds good.

Joe Grover: [01:09] Tell me a little bit about Ivy League Growth and how you—I think the early part of your consulting experience, you engaged with three different companies to help them scale, and they all ran into some issues. And as we’ve talked about this, there’s some patterns and some learning there that I’d love to share.

Lindsey Ivie: [01:27] Yeah, yeah, so that’s actually how we began our consulting business was my husband and I, we started working on a few different startups together, but it was more full-time because I, at the time—eight, nine years ago—fractional CROs, CMOs, and those type of things weren’t as well known. There weren’t as many companies that were doing that. So him and I both came on. The first company we started with was a student housing software. So we were—and that was my first time working with a SaaS company. Before that, I was working in telecom, so it was slinging fiber and all those fun things. But we were in it, and I was over a lot of the partnership stuff, and he was in the sales too. So we were just out knocking doors of different university—their student housing buildings—and we were just all over Provo, because obviously there’s a lot there. And we got a lot of sales lined up for them. And it was a really cool software. It was unique in what they were doing, where you could go in and you can book a room with your other—if you have another roommate. So usually you’re booking the whole space, but you could book the bed. So that was unique at the time, and it was because, front-facing, the MVP and everything looked amazing. It was super polished. It looked great. It was really easy to get people on board. And we did. We did get quite—we had a huge pipeline.

Joe Grover: [03:12] You built the marketing strategy and the sales strategy. 

Lindsey Ivie: [03:15] Yeah, the sales—we were crushing the sales. But then it came time to onboard. And I still have a little PTSD from some of that, because, basically, it was a clickable wireframe at the time. So I remember sitting inside of King Henry—is it like King Henry? Is that the student house? There’s one of the old— 

Joe Grover: [03:42] Somewhere down—

Lindsey Ivie: [03:43] Yeah, down, down, in Provo, watching people line up to sign up for it or just to onboard, and every two seconds is breaking. Breaking. I was just sitting there, shaking, on the phone with the dev team. It was completely falling apart. 

Joe Grover: [03:56] Because you sold it before it had really been built. 

Lindsey Ivie: [04:00] Yeah.

Joe Grover: [04:02] Which, by the way, is not a bad strategy for an entrepreneur.

Lindsey Ivie: [04:03] No, it’s not.

Joe Grover: [04:05] Unless—

Lindsey Ivie: [04:06] You’re trying to do—

Joe Grover: [04:07] —that outstrips your ability to build the product.

Lindsey Ivie: [04:09] So I just sat there, and I was just watching everything fall apart in front of me. And I just had to see it. It’s one thing to sell something, but it’s another thing to physically be there and watch it completely not work, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And that was really a lot for me. But what had to happen in this case is they brought in a dev team and they’re like, “Okay, now you’re selling soft; you’re selling dev services.” Because they had to go and build it, but they also had to bring in revenue. So our role switched from selling the student housing software to selling dev service.

Joe Grover: [04:46] Outsourced dev development services.

Lindsey Ivie: [04:48] And that happened back to back to back. It’s crazy. Same exact situation.

Joe Grover: [04:56] And what was your role in the company then? Were you a consultant? Were you an owner?

Lindsey Ivie: [05:00] I was a part of—yeah, we were the first—

Joe Grover: [05:05] Basically, the first employees.

Lindsey Ivie: [05:06] The sales people. Yeah. And so that happened again with another company.

Joe Grover: [05:10] Same story? 

Lindsey Ivie: [05:11] Same exact thing.

Joe Grover: [05:12] You sold it. You got some early traction. People were buying what you were selling. But then, when they turned it on, it didn’t—

Lindsey Ivie: [05:19] it did not. Yeah, the integration. It just— 

Joe Grover: [05:21] How bad was the experience?

Lindsey Ivie: [05:23] The last one—one of them was rough because it affected people’s business in a big way. Because of what it was. I won’t go into details on that one, but it happened. So it’s crazy. After three times of that happening, I’m like, “Okay, this is a pattern.”

Joe Grover: [05:43] Three times in a row.

Lindsey Ivie: [05:45] Three times in a row. Same exact problem. They had to bring in an in-house dev team. We were then now selling dev services to bring in revenue, but it was the same exact problem.

Joe Grover: [05:57] And in each case, they were trying to drive revenue from both the product they had built as well as reselling dev services?

Lindsey Ivie: [06:02] Which was way too early. It wasn’t working. They needed—well, in a lot of ways, it was just how it was built. It needed to be built with an enterprise-level software development team.

Joe Grover: [06:14] Why do you think that was? Was it a function of the entrepreneurs and their technical capabilities? Why do you think—because that’s really unusual for you to have the same experience three times in a row. It sounds like you crushed the sales and marketing piece.

Lindsey Ivie: [06:28] Well, they had a good product I was excited about. 

Joe Grover: [06:31] Or the product vision.

Lindsey Ivie: [06:32] The vision of, well, yeah, to specify, the product wasn’t working, but the vision of the problem it solved was really good. But in the same way, in those cases, what I found was interesting in the pattern of it is they all raised money. So I feel like when it’s not your money coming out of your pocket and you can just dump it into different things, you’re not as thoughtful—

Joe Grover: [07:01] Interesting.

Lindsey Ivie: [07:02] —in how it’s built.

Joe Grover: [07:04] There was money from angel investors.

Lindsey Ivie: [07:06] Angel investors. Yeah, so it was enough to throw a couple hundred grand at the development and put into your team. But that was the case in all three of them. They had done that early raise based on their pitch.

Joe Grover: [07:23] Right. An amazing story, a vision, a problem to be solved in the market.

Lindsey Ivie: [07:26] Exactly. 

Joe Grover: [07:27] And then, ta-da, uh-oh, doesn’t work.

Lindsey Ivie: [07:30] Yeah, which was just crazy. Yeah, and I would imagine I’ve heard this happens a lot. Right.

Joe Grover: [07:37] So it’s interesting to break down. Maybe the pattern is, hey, you oversold, right? You sold something that really wasn’t ready for prime time. Maybe because they had access to outside money, they were a little bit more aggressive at selling the product early, right? To show some traction to those investors so they could raise more money. It also could be a question of whether or not early-stage startups should be product-led growth or marketing-led growth.

Lindsey Ivie: [08:06] Yeah.

Joe Grover: [08:07] You’ve had many experiences since then with clients in your own startups. Where, in your experience, have you seen the most success from early-stage technology startups: product-led growth or marketing and sales-led growth?

Lindsey Ivie: [08:20] That’s a good question. I think it depends on what you’re selling. In a lot of places, like in the ecom space, it’s marketing, right? You can sell if you have the right marketing engine, you can sell anything. But when it comes to—there just has to be the functionality. It has to work, which, it sounds crazy and sounds like a really dumb thing to say, because it’s like, “Well duh, why would you sell something that doesn’t work?” You’d be very surprised how many people are out there preselling a product that’s not there. And I feel like you don’t want to bring a sales team on too soon. If you’re the founder, you should be ready and prepared to make those first sales until it works.

Joe Grover: [09:09] Because the founder is closer, maybe, to the product development and the functionality and the capabilities than a salesperson, especially a hired guy, right?

Lindsey Ivie: [09:19] Especially if they’re not being truthful about where the product is and they’re just like, “Just go sell it.”

Joe Grover: [09:24] Yeah, “sales will solve our problems.”

Lindsey Ivie: [09:27] “They’ll just solve all the problems. We’ll fix it as soon as they sell it, and we can just make it work.”

Joe Grover: [09:33] But you’re threading a needle as an entrepreneur because revenue does solve a lot of problems, and that early validation and traction is a really strong signal that you’re solving the right problem. And customer feedback can help perfect a product. But if it’s too early, it has the opposite effect, right, which is the blowback from customers’ reputation risk, both for the company and for the salespeople and the team that are delivering that.

Lindsey Ivie: [09:56] Yeah, and I think with one of these companies that I was working with, this specific statement really led to what we are with Ivy League Growth was like, “I wish I could just put you on pause and bring you back on when things were working.” I’m like, “And you’re a W-2 employee. You can’t.” Yeah, there wasn’t a way to do that. And so that’s where my husband and I were like, “Well, what if you could—what if we were fractional?” And what if we can come in, and you could get a little bit of our time? Right now, you’re not fully prepared to go out and do the sales piece, but you do need help from sales, and you do need help with marketing, and you need help with building that out and figuring out pricing and figuring out all those different things. But you probably can’t afford or you’re not in a good position to draw up a ton of money down for a full-time person. And you’re not ready for that full-time person. And that’s what really pushed us in the direction of doing the more fractional was because I’m like, “People need this.” Startups need the expertise, but they need it on a budget, and they don’t need a full-time person. 

Joe Grover: [11:11] That’s right. I mean, yeah, you’re preaching the choir, totally.

Lindsey Ivie: [11:14] I was like, “You get it right.”

Joe Grover: [11:15] And the reality is the flexibility that that affords actually derisks the journey for the entrepreneur because they can get access to talent and experience that they wouldn’t get access to otherwise, because they can’t afford to hire a full-time head of sales or VP of sales that has done this three or four or five times, or a CMO that has done this three or four times. And so they get access to a caliber of talent they wouldn’t have otherwise, but also the flexibility of, “Let’s go out and sell a little bit; let’s build the go-to-market strategy. And if it doesn’t work, I don’t have to fire someone, right? I can throttle down. I can turn it off, I can go back to the workshop, figure out my product, and then I can go back to market.” And so I think that flexibility is really important. Fixed costs early in the startup journey I have seen create some bad decision-making. Because when you have high fixed costs, then you’re like, “Well, I have to sell my way through it.” And if you’re not ready to deliver the product, then you have a bad customer experience, and that hurts retention and reputation, and it really is dangerous if you hire too early or hire senior people too early. 

Lindsey Ivie: [12:22] Yeah.

Joe Grover: [12:23] It’s a great insight. You also have your own startup journey, and I’d love for you to talk a little bit more about ShareHouse and what was the vision there, and what did you learn from that experience yeah.

Lindsey Ivie: [12:37] So how far—what are we? A year and a half? So I came on full-time to ShareHouse. Was it 2023? Yeah, so last year. And I was in a position where they were looking for another cofounder to build it. So the initial vision of it was they were actually really close to signing the paperwork on a big space for a coworking 3PL, essentially, for ecommerce brands. But that shifted gears in the earlier days of ShareHouse. And then they went more to the community. So they were doing a lot of monthly community events. They did a big conference—an Amazon conference—before I got there, and that was truly what they—they had done a really good job. They had a good established Slack channel, and they had a really good following that way. But when I came on, we sat down, and we just went over, “Okay, what are we doing? What are we spending our time doing? We need to make money. We got to get a return here.” And initially, I was like, “Well, I think we need to shift gears.” Because they were doing two to three free events a month. I’m like, “That’s a lot of work.”

Joe Grover: [14:01] A lot of cost.

Lindsey Ivie: [14:03] It’s a lot of cost, and you’re chasing down smaller sponsors. 

Joe Grover: [14:07] Because your jam is events and partnerships, right?

Lindsey Ivie: [14:10] It’s funny that you say that. I guess it is now, but I actually have a lot of experience more in building partnerships. But I think I’ve just fallen into that because I’ve worked with a lot of startups who are like, “Well, what are we gonna do now? We can do an event or we can do whatever. We have zero marketing budget. What are you gonna do?” But we shifted gears and tried to focus on the ecommerce founders and the ecommerce decision-makers, and trying to create resources and events and different things like that to help benefit them and help them in their journey. So it started off as—it was a joke initially. The idea for Madeline, who was my cofounder, came up with the name OnlyBrands. She was texting me. She’s like, “What if we called it OnlyBrands?” I’m like, “Yes, that’s it. That’s the name.” And it was initially just a joke, a text back and forth. But then it became something much bigger, and just a humorous part of what we were building. And that was more on the side of the community, right? OnlyBrands was what we built out on the event side and what turned into taking a group of founders to Disneyland and the UFC fights.

Joe Grover: [15:34] I heard that was a fantastic trip. 

Lindsey Ivie: [15:36] It was so—

Joe Grover: [15:34] Heard that from some clients.

Lindsey Ivie: [15:37] It was so crazy. It was so fun. That was my favorite. I’ve done Disney. I grew up in California, so I’ve done Disney a lot, but going with a group of—

Joe Grover: [15:46] A lot of Minnie Mouse years at the house.

Lindsey Ivie: [15:48] Yeah, just people were just so open. And there’s points where people were crying and opening up and just having that experience with other people that are on the same journey as you. It was really cool. I have just lasting relationships from that. So that was a really fun thing we got to do. But outside of that, we wanted to build more of a platform, and that’s where we were able to pull together, pull it off in a week. It was crazy how quickly we built it out. But I knew from my experience of you don’t want to dump a ton of money into dev until you have it figured out. So we were able to use existing tools and things to build it out initially, which was a platform where you could book a time with an ecommerce expert. And it worked. Built it out on WordPress, and it worked. You could go in, you could book a time, the payments worked. That was all great. 

Joe Grover: [16:47] It was all off the shelf.

Lindsey Ivie: [16:48] All off the shelf.

Joe Grover: [16:49] No proprietary dev.

Lindsey Ivie: [16:50] No, there wasn’t any.

Joe Grover: [16:52] This is another great learning.

Lindsey Ivie: [16:53] Yeah.

Joe Grover: [16:54] Just there’s so much software available to us today that I think entrepreneurs feel like, “If I don’t build it on my own and every line of code is new, then I’m not creating something of value.” And that’s a fallacy. You should build the things that aren’t in the market. Build the integrations or the functionality that doesn’t exist. But why build another CRM? Why build another scheduling tool? We’ve got proven tools that have been in market for a long time. 

Lindsey Ivie: [17:21] Yeah, I got to know Calendly really well. 

Joe Grover: [17:24] Exactly. Why build Calendly?

Lindsey Ivie: [17:26] I was like, “You literally can build an entire company off of Calendly.” And we did. WordPress and Calendly. You can do that. And yeah, that’s what I learned from my learning experiences from those early-stage startups was we could figure this out. And then we can do a proprietary one once we have the funding and once—

Joe Grover: [17:42] You’ve proven that people—

Lindsey Ivie: [17:43] You’ve proven that people care. But we built it. It worked. Pulled it off. And then it was the recruiting piece. I was on top of that. We wanted to build a marketplace where people could go and when these mentors that were on the platform made/referred other services to people, they could get a residual.

Joe Grover: [18:04] Like an affiliate model.

Lindsey Ivie: [18:05] An affiliate. So I was also having calls with hundreds of different partners trying to line that up and then trying to get this piece done. So it was all coming together. I feel like it needed—obviously, with platforms like Intro and things like that, a ton of marketing dollars are getting dumped into those to acquire new customers, which was where we were bootstrapping. So that was a little tricky. So everything was very marketed in a way with very limited budget on that piece.

Joe Grover: [18:37] So no capital or very little capital.

Lindsey Ivie: [18:42] Yeah, so, it was definitely getting bootstrapped with that piece. Because we were trying to be smart in the way of not dumping more money into something if we could figure out how to just gauge the interest, potentially raise later. 

Joe Grover: [18:56] But people were interested. You started building this. And marketplaces—it’s kind of a marketplace.

Lindsey Ivie: [19:01] They’re hard. 

Joe Grover: [19:02] Marketplaces are the toughest.

Lindsey Ivie: [19:03] They’re the hardest, yeah.

Joe Grover: [19:05] Right. And where did you find more difficulty? Was it getting the experts? Was it getting the brands? Which side of the marketplace was the most difficult to acquire users?

Lindsey Ivie: [19:17] I think we had a pretty good base of experts on the platform. And those weren’t as hard to get on. It was just the marketing. It’s getting to the market with what you have, that’s the hardest part I feel. Because people got it, though. They clicked. It made sense to a lot of people who are like, “Oh yeah, this is needed.” But getting that message to everyone? That’s where there’s typically bigger costs or just have to be grinded out. I think a lot of it was—in my mind, I was like, “We just need to do a lot of personalized outreach to people.” Like, “Hey, this is a new platform you can use.” I found a lot of success in doing the dirty work that people don’t want to do, but it’s effective, especially with events.

Joe Grover: [20:03] Yeah.

Lindsey Ivie: [20:04] One-to-one.

Joe Grover: [20:06] Interesting. So what is that? Yeah, expand on that. That’s interesting. What is the dirty work?

Lindsey Ivie: [20:10] The dirty work is the laborious work that people want to do one video, put it out there, and then it gets to everyone, and everyone buys what you’re selling, which, that works really well. But I think what I’ve found over my years of doing events and helping with events, it’s personalized messages, especially when you’re newer and people don’t know who you are, and they need to know why they would be buying into what you’re doing. It takes a text, it takes an email, it takes a lot of those different things. And I felt like that’s where we were at, where it’s like, “Okay, we’re just going to have to do the outbound.”

Joe Grover: [20:48] Yeah, it’s so interesting, because we’re throwing this event in two weeks, and I’m just sitting and scrolling through all my contacts and making text invites. And so I’m telling all my partners, I’m like, “Listen, this is not about a LinkedIn post. This is about just go invite 50, 75, 100 people, and a personal invite goes a long way.” It’s that one-to-one that is really powerful, because we’re all just overloaded with so many marketing messages.

Lindsey Ivie: [21:16] I get so many emails every day I don’t check all my emails. And then I’m not bought in. I’m not bought into your newsletter. I’m sorry. I get so many newsletters. But you have people, and a lot of times they’re like, “Well, why should I go?” And then they’re not going to be able to ask that question to your newsletter. You’d have to answer that in a one-to-one message. But that’s, I think, more and more like marketing people, because we get so bombarded with ads and all these different emails and different things. I don’t feel a connection to that. I think more and more people are going to look for a one-to-one connection.

Joe Grover: [21:56] I totally agree: One-to-one is powerful, right, in an environment where everything is one-to-many. So, tell me a little bit about how you were feeling at this moment. You’re seeing early traction with ShareHouse. You’re spending 12 hours a day—15 hours. I mean, it takes a lot of time to build a business. And then what happened?

Lindsey Ivie: [22:16] Not getting into too many details, there’s just some differences in the partnership that led to us deciding we needed to shut the doors. We did have an opportunity. They were generous and like, “Hey, you can take it over and keep running with it.” But I was just—I was contemplating—I think a lot of times, so much of our identity is in what we’re building at work, but then we lose sight of what’s happening at home. And in reality, that whole year I was going through the motions of my life, the things that really mattered, which were—I literally had my four kids. I have four kids.

Joe Grover: [23:08] I have six. So I—

Lindsey Ivie: [23:10] You get it. Yeah, it’s a lot. And at the time, in order to pull off a full day’s work, I was getting four kids out the door at 7:45 every day. And then I wouldn’t see them till 5:30 that night. I would do the loop, pick them up on the way home—

Joe Grover: [23:30] Then you’re back on your computer at night after the kids go down.

Lindsey Ivie: [23:33] Yeah, because you’re always doing something. So you’re never fully disconnected. And even though I had that opportunity to, “I could take this; I could keep going with it,” but then, “My kids are young.” And I just was like, “I feel like I’ve forgotten—” The biggest failure in my life would be failing my kids. So it just didn’t seem to matter. As hard as that was to shut the doors—and we decided just to let that happen—I felt even more questions in my life, like, “Am I really focused on what matters? How can I create more balance in my life and not get fully sucked into things that are consuming my whole life?” And that’s what happened, right? I did that. I allowed myself to get—and it’s hard for me to set boundaries with myself. When I get really excited about things I’m working on and I get really involved, I have a really hard time setting boundaries. And in my mind I’m like, “Oh, I’m doing all this good stuff.” But then I’m like, “But am I? Who’s not getting my time? Who’s not getting my attention?” I think that’s where I decided for myself, “I know if I continue down this path with this project, it’s gonna take a lot of my time, and my kids are so young right now. I don’t feel like that’s what I want to do with my life right now.”

Joe Grover: [25:09] It’s a really tough decision to make, but maybe not so tough when you really put it in perspective, right? The fear you had of failure was probably you had a greater fear that you would fail in the thing that mattered the very most, which is your role as a parent, as a mother, versus failing at a startup.

Lindsey Ivie: [25:31] Yeah, and I think it goes back to even—so, my dad was an entrepreneur, and I feel like a lot of that entrepreneur spirit is in me. But he passed away when I was 20, and it was after I hadn’t seen him for a whole month. He was working 20-hour days. He was doing a big project up in Washington for Costco, sealing the flooring. And I hadn’t seen him for—and when I did see him after his 20-hour work days and getting three hours of sleep in the car, he just looked dead inside. I don’t know how to explain it. He very much was driven, wanting to be an entrepreneur, wanting to do all the things to help support his family. And then, the next second, he’s gone. He died in an accident on his way to that project he was working on. Sorry. 

[26:57] I think we just need those reminders. And I think he is constantly reminding me of what’s important, because I think if he could go back in time, he wouldn’t—that’s not where he would want to put his time, right? Even though he would want to have more time with his family, right?

Joe Grover: [27:23] One hundred percent.

Lindsey Ivie: [27:24] So that was the reminder, because you get so focused, and you get so sucked into whatever you’re doing, and at the end of the day, it’s true failure is failing your family, right? The whole purpose of working and building is so we can grow as a person, but it’s so we can support our family. That’s the whole reason. That’s why we go to work every day. So I’m grateful that I do still have—I feel like there is a purpose to my drive of being an entrepreneur and wanting to do the things I do. But I think you just have to check yourself sometimes.

Joe Grover: [28:05] Yeah, thank you so much for being so vulnerable and open about something that’s so personal. And I find myself sitting here as a father and asking myself the question, “Is the cost worth the reward?”

Lindsey Ivie: [28:21] Mm-hmm.

Joe Grover: [28:23] And maybe I’ll just look at the audience and the listeners and just say, “Maybe this is your time to reflect on whether or not your journey in entrepreneurship is worth it.” Because there’s a lot of ways you can make money and fulfill your ambitions and provide for a family. And entrepreneurship takes a level of sacrifice—time, emotional energy, focus—that is unusual. It’s not a nine to five. And so I love that you surface this whole idea of failure in your family is the worst kind of failure. Failure in business is not.

Lindsey Ivie: [29:15] It’s truly not. Yeah. After we shut the doors of ShareHouse, I’ll be honest: I disconnected from social media. I disappeared for three months because I had to still process it, because it’s a loss. When you build something and then you don’t have it anymore, there’s a loss there, so I felt that loss.

Joe Grover: [29:37] Why did you disconnect from social media? Talk to me about—was it shame? Was it embarrassment—was it just you were overwhelmed?

Lindsey Ivie: [29:43] I just didn’t—I think it was just a little bit of both, probably. I think there’s—my identity? It’s no longer there. So you’re just like, “Well, who am I?” I think it was finding myself again, because I gave myself to this, and now I had to take a step back and be like, “Nope, that’s not who I am. That is not who I am. Who am I?” I think that’s a hard question. And that’s something we can all ask ourselves is “Who are you outside of your business?”

Joe Grover: [30:12] That’s right.

Lindsey Ivie: [30:13] If you can’t answer that question, I would invite you to take a step back and really dig deep and figure out who you are, because that could be gone in a second.

Joe Grover: [30:26] What’s up, fail fans? As we’ve listened to so many guests on this podcast, that the road to success is often paved with failure, with a lot of challenges, and even full-on face-plants. But there’s a thing that you could do to help skip some of those bumps and bruises, and that’s really where the consultants at Amplēo come in. See, Amplēo offers fractional executives in finance, marketing, and HR. And these are people who’ve experienced a lot. They’ve been in the trenches. They’ve built businesses. They’ve failed. But here’s the kicker: They’ve learned from those failures, and now they’re applying all that wisdom to your business to support you so you don’t have to learn the hard way. I mean, think about it: Instead of stumbling around in the dark and hoping you don’t hit the wall, you could bring someone in who’s already mapped out that room, right? Amplēo consultants and experts have worked with and for numerous companies of all sizes, and they’ve gathered insights on what works and where to focus and how to actually grow your business efficiently.

[31:25] So while we embrace failure on this podcast, there is no rule that says you have to fail at everything yourself. So check out Amplēo and see how their fractional executives can help your business move forward and avoid those painful learning curves. Sometimes the smartest move is learning from someone else’s failure. Visit Amplēo.com to learn more.

Joe Grover: [31:46] Businesses will come and go.

Lindsey Ivie: [31:47] Yeah.

Joe Grover: [31:48] And we’ve talked about this with other entrepreneurs. When our identity and our feelings of worth and value are inseparably tied and connected with our title and our role as a founder, a CEO, or a CMO, or whatever our role is in our company, we set ourselves up for a lot more pain than is necessary. Because the second we’re not a CEO or a founder or a successful entrepreneur or at a Fast 50 event, then we feel like we’re not worth anything or our value—to society, to our community, to our friends—has somehow been diminished 

Lindsey Ivie: [32:27] Yeah.

Joe Grover: [32:27] So it’s easy to say that. It’s hard to do it. So what? How have you decoupled your role as an entrepreneur with your sense of self-worth?

Lindsey Ivie: [32:40] I think it’s actually helped that I’ve done less, if that makes sense. I’m not at every event. I’m very selective in where I spend my time, because I feel like I don’t have to show face anymore. It’s just being more thoughtful, because I know that that time spent there is time spent away from my family. So I have taken a huge step back. I used to be at every networking event. I used to be at a lot more things, but I think I’m just a lot more thoughtful in where I spend my time.

Joe Grover: [33:14] I think that there’s this FOMO as an entrepreneur and a founder where you’re—man, I had an event last night I should have been at, and I was feeling guilt around that, as 7:00,” and I was like, “I should really be there.” It’s down in Utah County. There’s amazing people there, amazing speakers, and I wasn’t there. And I can’t tell you how many times I’m like, “I’m not doing my job. I’m not representing the brand. I’m not building if I’m not present.” But guess what? I’m not representing my real job. I’m not impacting the people that matter most when I’m not present with my children. And so we have to pick our places. There are ebbs and flows in the entrepreneurial journey. But I love that we have to be really obsessive as entrepreneurs around where we spend our time. Otherwise, every hour of every day will get filled with things that seem important in the moment, which may or may not be highest impact, bring us the most joy, and help us succeed in life outside of work.

Lindsey Ivie: [34:13] Yeah, yeah.

Joe Grover: [34:16] So it’s really—unfortunately, you and I are probably having to learn this the hard way. 

Lindsey Ivie: [34:22] Yeah, but at least we learn. That’s the whole point of life, right? It’s to learn. If you’re taking a step back, and you’re allowing yourself to learn from these things, I think that’s the whole point of existing. Right?

Joe Grover: [34:33] What’s your key learning from the ShareHouse experience? What’s the piece that’s like, “I won’t make that mistake again”?

Lindsey Ivie: [34:40] Honestly, it’s the time. I think where I’m at in my life now with my kids, the age they are, I don’t want to put myself in a position where I spend that much time away from them. I know that’s probably not the business answer you’re looking for, but for me, it’s—and then, yeah, I think that’s probably the biggest thing what I needed to learn from that is the priority I needed to put in place. And I can still be an entrepreneur; I can still build. But I can maybe be a little more thoughtful in what I’m building and how I’m building it and where I’m spending my time.

Joe Grover: [35:31] Any learning around partnerships? Partnerships are hard. I see so many cofounders go into business together, and it’s exciting on day one, and sometimes misalignment or personality conflicts can be the thing that craters the business.

Lindsey Ivie: [35:44] I wouldn’t say this—ShareHouse—there was the personality, different things that played out there. But overall, I had a really good experience from that, and I’m grateful for what I learned. And I’m grateful for the opportunity that I got to—I feel like I got an MBA in building that. There’s so much I learned and so many incredible relationships I made from being there. And I think I was meant to do that. I was meant to spend that time doing that. I’m grateful for that. But I would say in other ventures I’ve done in the past is to always get things in writing, because I’ve had businesses taken from under me through an email because somebody owned the domain that I didn’t have access to, and I didn’t have anything in writing to protect me from that.

Joe Grover: [36:42] Yeah, it’s a great finding. We need to have trusting relationships with our partners, but it’s also helpful to get things in writing, because I’ve seen too many times where there’s a handshake agreement and then, when things get hard or things are going great, those handshake agreements get rewritten in ways that can be really damaging to the business and to the entrepreneurs.

Lindsey Ivie: [37:00] I think I heard a saying. It’s like, “You keep honest people honest when you get it in writing.” Because at the end of the day, things will happen, and you don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes with your partner—what they’re dealing with at home, if they’re having financial strain, what’s leading them to act the way they’re acting. But you’re keeping them honest if you have it in writing.

Joe Grover: [37:26] I like that. Keeping honest people honest. I remember when we connected, I was fascinated by this event because I was just in the process of launching the podcast.

Lindsey Ivie: [37:34] Yeah.

Joe Grover: [37:34] So tell me about FailedFest. What was the inspiration for this? Maybe what you’ve talked about today?

Lindsey Ivie: [37:39] Yeah.

Joe Grover: [37:39] But what was the inspiration? What’s the format? Tell me more about FailedFest.

Lindsey Ivie: [37:43] Yeah, so it’s actually—it was two years ago. I was at lunch with my husband, and we had a few other people there. My friend Sarah was there as well. And we were just joking around there are typical conferences in Utah. It’s always people getting interviewed, these super successful founders, and you’re just hearing all the things they did right and all the things they did well. And then we just were joking around like, “What if we had FailedFest? And it was everyone’s failures, and instead of—we have a couch and a therapist, and they’re interviewing the founder of all the things you haven’t heard about, behind the scenes, all the failures that happened that led to their successes?” And then we were just spiraling. “And we can have the graveyard of failed products and all these different fun things.” And I sat on that for a while. And I think after my experience with ShareHouse, where I was like, “I felt it a little deeper,” I’m like, “I think a lot of people need to hear from people they look up to what’s really happening behind the scenes that led them to where they are today.” So it’s been a work in progress. We’re shooting for October. But I was pretty—I was pulled into a really big event that took a lot of my time.

Joe Grover: [39:07] which was phenomenal.

Lindsey Ivie: [39:08] Yeah, so I’m looking at a few new dates for that. And we have some things leading up to—I want to build more of a community around it and have once-a-month panels, not just one big thing. So I’m trying to break that down because I want people to have access to it more often than once a year, one big conference where we could have these conversations more openly.

Joe Grover: [39:31] I think they’re so valuable. That’s why I launched the podcast, and that’s why I’m so grateful you came on to share that. Because we need to hear the unvarnished versions of these entrepreneurial stories, not just to help entrepreneurs who are navigating the complex emotional and financial implications of a failed business, but also to help entrepreneurs that are thinking, “Hey, I want to start my own company, and I’m reading Entrepreneur Magazine and Fast Company and LinkedIn. I’m watching LinkedIn, and all these entrepreneurs are making it.” And the reality is no, most of the entrepreneurs are not making it, even when it seems like they’re doing well. The cost of that and the eventual outcomes in most cases are closing the doors—the experience you had and that I’ve had. And unless we talk about that and destigmatize failure, then I feel like we’re just going to be glorifying the IPOs and all the success stories—and really, that’s not the most probable outcome.

Lindsey Ivie: [40:30] Yeah, and I wonder if there’s more people being open about—even those three startups I worked with—”Don’t do this. This will make you fail.” How many companies will be more successful if we’re more open about things to avoid? Like, “Don’t do this.”

Joe Grover: [40:49] At episode 100 of The F Word, if we get there—

Lindsey Ivie: [40:52] Yeah.

Joe Grover: [40:53] I want to just take all of the patterns and all of the learnings and the stories and just distill it down into a guide. Like, “Here are the hundred things that you should never do,” and maybe it’s 10 things, but like, “Here are the things you should be aware of. Here are the pitfalls. Right? Here are the things that entrepreneurs over and over and over again have had to learn the hard way. And you don’t have to learn the hard way.” It’s also the reason why your engagement with a company is so beneficial as a consultant is you can help say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’ve seen this. I’ve seen this before.”

Lindsey Ivie: [41:27] “You don’t want to do this.”

Joe Grover: [41:28] “You don’t want to do this.”

Lindsey Ivie: [41:29] “You don’t want to do this.”

Joe Grover: [41:30] Like, “Let’s not go sell that product 10,000 times when it doesn’t work.” Right? It’s vaporware. So, Lindsey, this has been so insightful. What would you share with an entrepreneur? Both your perspective as a consultant, having worked with lots of companies that are growing and scaling, as a cofounder of a company that had to shut its doors, and as a mother? What would you share with an entrepreneur?

Lindsey Ivie: [41:55] I would share that it’s so important to not try to do everything yourself. To lean on friends and mentors and people to help you through those hard times. And sometimes that means taking a step back. I think it’s so hard. You get sucked into what you’re building and doing, and it might be destroying your life. Right? And maybe it’s okay to fail. And I think that’s a hard thing to hear. Nobody wants to fail. Nobody wants to feel like a failure. But even through shutting the doors of the companies I’ve had to work with—and I’ve seen the doors shut up—I’ve learned so much. And I am the person who I am today, and I have the experience in my career that I have, because I took a chance and I learned from that. But I’m not a failure because things didn’t work out. Maybe that’s the biggest thing. You’re not a failure. And even if you’re in a dark place, and you feel like giving up, and you feel like you’ve just failed at everything, just think of all the things you’ve gained and learned from those experiences that have created growth in you and the person you are today.

Joe Grover: [43:16] I love that. You have failed, but you are not a failure.

Lindsey Ivie: [43:21] Yeah. That’s okay. I have failed. I have failed so many times. But thinking through all those times, I’ve grown so much as a person. And I’ve learned so much from those experiences. 

Joe Grover: [43:36] I love that. I also love the insight that entrepreneurs think they have to do it on their own. And I once sat in a meeting with a founder of a company. And I said—he was the CEO, and I had just come off a stint as a CEO that was really tough. And I looked at him, and I said, “It’s really lonely to be the CEO.” And he said, “No, it’s not.” And I was like—I had just met him—and I was like, “Whoa.” And he said, “It’s not lonely. It’s not lonely if you surround yourself by people that you trust and you share that load. The success and failure of this business will not rest on me alone.” And that was such a profound moment in my career. And I’ve never said that the job of a CEO is lonely. There were moments, many years into that journey, that we talked about that conversation. I think there was moments he did feel the loneliness, and I reminded him it’s not lonely if you lean on us, your management team, and you lean on mentors and your family. So that’s amazing.

Lindsey Ivie: [44:30] I’m Lindsey Ivie. I failed, but I am not a failure.

Joe Grover: [44:35] Thanks for tuning in to The Real F Word. The real F word is failure, and remember that failure is a stepping stone; it’s not just a stumbling block. Join us next time as we continue to explore the journey of resilience and growth, without ignoring the true costs personally, professionally, and financially that comes with failure. Keep learning, keep growing, and keep embracing the real stories of entrepreneurship. See you next time.