Being sued by your own record company; that’s even better than winning a Grammy.
—Neil Young (Grammy winner/proud lawsuit recipient)
Before we found a more permanent solution to our need for an office, we rented space from a big printing company in Minnesota. The owner of the company was a highly successful businessperson named Trish, who discovered our company through a mutual friend.
One day, Trish asked to meet with Kevin and me because she said she loved our energy and what we were trying to do for the environment. She invited us into her office and told us, “Hey guys, I know how hard it is to get started. At this point in my career, I’d like to help other people with great ideas to make it in the business world. So, here’s what I’m going to do. Why don’t you move into my printing office? You can set up shop in there until you start making money. In the meantime, I’ll help you guys navigate the industry, and we’ll see if we can make a big impact together.”
Trish didn’t make us sign any contracts, which made it seem like we would have been fools to not accept her offer. Shortly after that, we ended up becoming very close. In fact, I thought of her as a sister and mentor at one point. When times got tough, I knew I could call her and get some good advice about business or life.
After a while, Trish handed us an American Express card and said, “Take this; it’s unlimited. Hit the streets and do some serious marketing with it. Rent some billboards, get a nice condo to stay in, and get your products in the stores. Go high-end, too. Don’t cheap out on anything, because you need to keep up a high-end image.”
“Sure. Here’s the thing,” I said. “We don’t have any money to pay you back.”
Trish looked at us somewhat incredulously and said, “No, no, no. I’ll cover it. We’ll worry about that stuff later. Just go work your asses off for now and focus on blowing up this brand.”
Not long after that, Kevin and I were driving around California in luxury sports cars, renting an outrageous condo in Santa Monica, and spending crazy money on marketing. I remember thinking at the time, “Shit. Is this a normal lifestyle for a businessperson? It seems a little too good to be true.” Not long after posing that question, I got my answer, which was categorically, no, that was not normal, and yes, it was definitely too good to be true.
A couple of months after our spending spree, Trish asked to meet with me for lunch. This time, she didn’t look quite as helpful or nearly as sisterly. “Hey Ben,” she said, “I need you to start paying me back for all that stuff I helped you with.”
After three to four seconds of an incredibly awkward silence, I came out with, “Wait a second. Did you say something about paying you back?”
With total seriousness and not a hint of friendliness, she responded, “Yeah, you know, for all those billboards and things you bought.” She elaborated, “Look, I need a couple million dollars from you guys.”
I said, “Trish, we have zero dollars, so…”
“Too bad,” she said. “You owe me a lot of money, and if I don’t get it soon, you’ll be hearing from my lawyers.”
I left her office that day not knowing what the hell we were going to do next. All of a sudden, the person who had been our biggest supporter turned on us. About three weeks later, she locked us out of the space we were using at her printing office. In fact, she hired a security guard, armed with a loaded handgun, to stand in front of the building with specific instructions to keep Kevin and me out. Of course, that wouldn’t have been so bad except…all of our equipment was still in there. Worst of all was the $1.5 million lawsuit we received just a couple weeks later.
As a kid, I remember thinking that anybody who got sued was a thief and a terrible person. They usually went to jail, I thought. Or maybe they were put to death by lethal injection. Okay, maybe not death, but I definitely thought people’s lives were ruined once they got sued.
I didn’t know where to turn at that point, and I was in a severely depressed mindset. Once again, however, I stayed true to my why. I wasn’t going to give up, so I called my mentor, Ken Rutkowski, who is still my mentor today. If anybody could help me, it was Ken.
My conversation with Ken was so memorable that I remember exactly where I was standing at the time we spoke. It was in front of a liquor store in the ghetto near Hermosa Beach. My head was leaning against a rusty signpost, and I kept thinking about how completely fucked I was.
When he picked up the phone, I said, “Ken, I am absolutely fucked! I’m getting sued for $1.5 million. I won’t be able to pay that in a hundred lifetimes.”
“Ben, are you serious?” Ken asked.
“Yeah, totally fucking serious.”
“Well then, congratulations!” he said.
At that point, I started to wonder if Ken was high on some kind of weird brain-altering substance or had just come back from Burning Man. Neither of those things was true, of course. Ken is too smart for anything like that. I asked him, “Ken, can you hear me okay? Because I just told you I’m getting sued for $1.5 million and you wished me congratu-fucking-lations!”
“Ben, yes…congratulations! I can hear you fine, and that’s great news because it means you’ve made it! You’ve leveled up,” he said. “Don’t you realize that most billionaires have about fifteen different lawsuits going on at the same time? If you don’t get sued at some point, you’re not trying hard enough.”
I thought about what he was trying to tell me, and said, “You know what? I think that actually makes a lot of sense.”
Exactly at that moment, my shift in mindset occurred. Total financial disaster had instantly transformed into my official arrival on the entrepreneurial scene. I was getting sued for the first time, which wasn’t the end of the world. It was actually awesome!
Almost any situation is entirely about mindset. You can view setbacks—like million-dollar lawsuits—as certain death, or you can look at them as opportunity. There is a silver lining to any situation, but you might have to look really hard to find it sometimes. If you have a kick-ass mentor like Ken in your corner, that’s probably a pretty good place to start looking.
Ken educated me to always look for that silver lining, but, more importantly, he made me realize that I still had a lot to learn. One of those lessons was that we can experience the most personal growth in times of our greatest emotional pain and turmoil. This speaks to something I call the “graduating mindset.”
Every time you experience a painful situation in life or business, you have an opportunity to graduate your mindset. In life, if you’re presented with a relationship issue that challenges you, that’s an opportunity to enhance your tolerance for emotional pain, which will lead to a greater ability to experience love.
The same is true in the business world. That pending lawsuit made me grow exponentially as a person and an entrepreneur. I learned how to deal with the pain of feeling like I was at rock bottom. My dreams of changing the world seemed like they had come to an end, until Ken changed my perspective.
Key Takeaway #4: Rather than getting discouraged about a particularly difficult challenge in life or in business, you should train your brain to “graduate” your current mindset and elevate to its future state. Ask yourself, “How would my future self wish I was thinking about this specific situation?” Or call a mentor and ask them, “How would you think about this specific situation?”
There will be a million opportunities for you to “graduate your mindset” throughout the execution of your idea. The better you get at doing that, the more successful you’ll be. A prime example of this is the life story of my boy, Teddy Roosevelt.
Perhaps nobody epitomizes the graduating mindset better than the twenty-sixth president of the United States and personal idol of mine, Teddy Roosevelt.
For starters, Roosevelt was born with debilitating asthma. Rather than giving in to such a condition, which there would have been no shame in, he confronted it by embarking on an exceedingly active lifestyle.
Later on, Roosevelt endured the near-simultaneous deaths of his wife and mother, as they passed within eleven hours of each other when he was only twenty-six years of age. To symbolize the effect of this tragedy, Roosevelt wrote a large X in his diary on the day this happened, followed by the heartbreaking and solemn words “The light has gone out of my life.”
Rather than continuing thoughts of despair and agony, Roosevelt dedicated his life to making a difference in the world. He graduated his mindset to achieve things few of us could even dream of. Just two years after the untimely passing of his wife and mother, Roosevelt became a member of the New York State Assembly and took on the specific challenge of battling corporate corruption.
After serving as assistant secretary of the Navy and governor of New York, Roosevelt won the election of 1901 to become president. He was reelected in the following election year and is still considered to have been one of the most successful presidents in American history.
Perhaps even more impressive than all his titles was Roosevelt’s achievement as an environmentalist. He established the US Forest Service and five national parks, preserved 150 million acres of land, and is accredited with planting over three billion trees!
Take a moment to think about those accomplishments. Think deeply about how Roosevelt’s life has impacted every one of us. If he hadn’t taken that first step to graduate his mindset, moved on from the devastating losses he suffered, and dedicated himself to the country he loved and the planet he wanted to protect, we wouldn’t have all those preserved sections of land to enjoy.
How many people have visited those national preserves that Roosevelt is responsible for?
How many people have been employed by the US Forest Service or one of the national parks he created?
How many people have breathed the fresh air that has been produced from the planting of over three billion trees?
Lastly, what would our country look like if this individual hadn’t pushed himself to graduate, overcome, and accomplish so much?
Remember, the world needs your fucking ideas!