My Two Biggest Failures (so far)

In the spirit of yesterday’s post on getting better through failure, I thought I would share my personal two biggest “mess-ups” so far at Rockfish.  It was going to be a top three list, but so many of them tied for third that I decided to stick with the two most obvious.

Failure #1: Trying to create a traditional advertising agency as part of Rockfish.  Out of the gate I had this grand idea that Rockfish would be a more attractive company if we could provide both traditional and interactive services to our clients.  That was a bad decision that I hung onto for far too long, disappointing a lot of people in the process.  
Lesson Learned: Start a company inside your sweet spot.  It’s hard enough to build a new business doing what you know well.  You need all your energy and attention focused on your strengths.  As soon as we closed the traditional advertising office our interactive business skyrocketed. 

Failure #2: Deciding to create our own agency management software (code named Hyrda).  There are lots of packages available for this purpose already.  They are not very expensive.  Still today I can’t believe I was dumb enough to think this was a good idea.  
Lesson Learned: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.  I wasted time and money having developers work on something that I should have simply purchased.  Hydra was slain by a Herculean workload and now lies buried in a code graveyard somewhere.  Any stories of a resurrection are simply a myth.