Cultivating a mindset that encourages productive failure has allowed me to pursue my passion for limited edition shoes and lead me to a career at CRG. As a kid, I remember begging my family to buy me the latest limited-edition sneakers. With an average price tag of $200, my family was understandably hesitant. Once it became apparent that new shoes released almost every week, their hesitation evolved into denial. To fund my passion, I started a business buying and selling limited edition sneakers. While I had some initial success, after a couple months I found myself over $2000 in debt. Sufficed to say, I was immediately cut off and banned from pursuing my sneaker passion any further. Despite my family’s ultimatum, I made the conscious decision that my initial failure would be productive. In other words, I was going to learn my mistakes.
Over the following six months I did as much research on the secondary sneaker market as I had time for, speaking to other ‘sneakerheads’, tracking the value of shoes by size, and even forecasting the resell price of shoes before they released. Armed with knowledge, I approached several family members until my uncle agreed to give me capital to restart my passion. Having learned from my experience, I managed to both repay my family and grow my sneaker business significantly over the following years. In doing so, I transformed my failure into a productive activity that fueled my later success.
In my endeavor to start a business involving my passion for limited-edition sneakers, I faced challenges at every turn. Welcoming the idea of failing productively allowed me to grow at a much faster rate, a mindset I strive evolve in my day-to-day life at CRG.
Today, at CRG I have found an inclusive group of bright individuals whom I can count on to constantly challenge me. While I do not strive for failure, I welcome it. As a consultant at CRG, there are a lot of things I’ve had to do for the first time. Despite these obstacles, I have been able to learn a lot in short periods of time by failing productively. In that spirit, I cannot wait to see where my next failure lies and what I may learn from it.