Lessons in Failure: Broncos and Board Games

I spent 14 months working on a board game that went live on Kickstarter this past Tuesday. It’s a really cool game that’s fun to play and interesting to look at. Unfortunately, it looks like it won’t meet it’s funding goal based on our current pace. I’ll lose my investment on it and need to take a year or so off from funding any more work on our future games. Though it sucks to feel defeated, I’ll take some time to build back the seed money to try again.

When I got laid off last April, I had the choice to pull back and delay our launch. That wouldve been disappointing, but none of my teammates would have blamed me for not wanting to spend the kind of cash we’d need to design and book an advertising campaign, let alone travel to a bunch of conventions to plug the game. Rather than delay, I chose the riskier path. Even without an income, I believed in what we were doing and decided to spend whatever it took to maintain our timeline for launching our crowdfunding campaign in October. We made it, and our hard work resulted in a great looking campaign.

As the go live date approached, I spent probably three weeks being the most scared I’ve ever been. During the worst of it, I was shaking in my office chair, having a difficult time concentrating on anything, couldn’t hardly hold a conversation, and blew off all my other responsibilities. It was nerve wracking. I had made something that I thought was good, and was going to see if the board game world agreed. I feared the feeling of rejection I might experience if the support wasn’t there. I was pretty embarrassed by how I felt, and my business partner could tell. He told me something that turned me around – being scared of something and doing it anyway makes you a brave person. That felt right, so I decided that it was ok to be scared and that I was, in fact, being brave.

Only a few days have gone by since go live and it’s maybe a little pessimistic to think we won’t see it pick up the pace. But it’s fair to say that our first day missed the mark that a successful campaign would want to hit. I won’t vote you with the details of what these things want to look like, but we’re not there right now. Today, we look like we’re heading for failure.

Alex, what does this have to do with football? Boy, I’m glad you asked. I’ve been watching the Denver Broncos bang their head against the turf every week for seven years, never once feeling like the team had it together. They’d go out onto the field, fumble the ball, go 3 and out, fail to slow the opposing offense… you name it, the Broncos couldn’t do it. Each season, after a few weeks, it felt like we were heading for failure – and every time, it was true. We haven’t even sniffed the postseason since Manning retired.

What I’m constantly telling people each season is that building a great football team is a long, arduous, and painful process of failures and lost value. Nobody can predict how bad it’s going to get until you start heading in the right direction, or if you’ll be able to sustain the positive momentum needed to get back to great. You just have to keep plugging away at it, withstanding the ugly games and the missed opportunities. You have to forgive the draft picks that don’t pan out and the coaches that can’t make it work. Never abandon your patience. Seal your heart against despair. Go back to work every time.

So today as I look at some less than promising numbers and a dwindling set of options for how to turn my kickstarter around while I still have a chance, I feel like the 2023 Denver Broncos. I’ve taken some crazy risks, just like how the Broncos traded for a QB and a coach, neither of whom are looking like world beaters. I’ve leveraged my future by spending so much, just like how they traded away draft picks and young talent. And I’m facing a mostly ugly situation with a few bright spots. It looks like it’s going to be a failure. And I need to treat my personal business with the same sensibility and pragmatism that I do my Broncos fandom. I might need a rebuilding year where nothing is fun and we gather assets to give it another shot, but when I have the chance I need to be ready to take that shot again.

I know this is a pretty melancholy writeup, especially for having been gone again for another month. It isn’t how I wanted things to be, but I think there’s a valuable lesson somewhere in here, for me at least. I may be failing, but I’m not a failure. And I feel the same way about my boys in orange.

Now that this board game thing is concluding, I am hoping to string two weeks of posts together. So for now, see you next week.