Failures

It's worth paying attention to people of Jobs' caliber, and generally to those who have created something lasting, achieved something exceptional, and possess the ability to stand out from the crowd of 7 billion. You must observe every move of such people, drink in every single word, and cherish every minute you spend in their vicinity, because their lives are their reference, and if you have the intelligence to incorporate and utilize the information and thoughts they share into your own life, then do so without hesitation. Because at the end of the path you embarked on because of them, there will be something great, which will then be exclusively yours, and you alone will possess it.

Connecting the dots, when you realize that nothing happens by chance, and 8 years after Stanford, I too understand what Jobs was talking about back then. A story about how failure is an indispensable part of our development, and if we don't encounter it, we are on the wrong path. This is my story, the story of LifeTilt's birth, which would never have happened if I hadn't failed, or if life hadn't knocked me down, and if I hadn't felt that it was over, there was no more, no way to get up from there. A story, nothing more, an example of how most of the time it takes a series of tragedies to find your way, because sometimes you have to lose to win everything later.

March 2009

Breakup with the greatest love of my life until then. A breakup that cruelly affected me, after which I felt there was no more, and painful longing became part of my daily life at that time. I woke up with pain and went to bed with this gnawing feeling for months. Everything reminded me of her, and nothing helped, nothing eased the suffering. Neither alcohol nor girls helped; wherever I went, whatever I did, everything reminded me of her, I could only talk about her, and I couldn't escape from it, but I didn't want to either. A girl who ripped out my soul, a girl whose loss made me feel like I had lost everything. If my best friend hadn't been by my side then, I have no idea how I would have gotten out of that state. I talked about this girl on Juventus radio, the female reporter on RTL Klub mentioned this girl, and she is the girl for whom, wanting to prove something to her, I started writing this blog.

I wanted to do something to make her notice me again, to create anything to prove to her that I was no longer that unmotivated, lazy, nobody asshole I was during our relationship. It was the biggest failure of my life that I lost the woman I loved more than anyone, for whom I would have done anything, and then when it dawned on me what I had lost, I couldn't get her back. I came to my senses too late, I took those steps too late that I should have taken then, and not just talked about them when we were still together. If it weren't for this girl, if it weren't for this breakup, this blog would never have been born. It was with this girl that I realized what a man's true duties in life are, that a man is worthless without goals and a vision for the future, that a man has a duty to achieve something and never be content with what he has. A man should only care about first place, and possess dominance, ambition, and the ability to overcome any difficulty life throws at him and emerge victorious from the battle. To this day, this kind of ambition and unquenchable desire for continuous development drives LifeTilt forward. You owe LifeTilt to this girl and this failure of mine, and I owe almost everything to this girl.

August 2010

At that time, I was still working at Vodafone, but even then, I was at the point where it wouldn't have taken much for me to go postal on HR. My problem wasn't with Voda, but with the entire corporate structure, which strips away your dreams and tears out all your individuality, like a relationship with that certain ill-chosen partner by your side. Fears, petty games, the "company above all" mindset, meetings that lead nowhere, stale relationships, the specter of losing the monthly income, which with each passing month further chains the potential within you. I knew I had to make a move, but of course, like most people, I lacked the courage. We'd talk about freedom, and how great it would be, and what if... Childhood dreams shared during cigarette breaks, waiting for that big break that had to come sooner or later, because it couldn't always be like this. Then, as we extinguished our cigarettes, the fire of our enthusiasm dwindled, and we went back to drudgery with dreams and hopes in our heads.

Of course, it's nice to believe that everything will be better one day, but you also have to act, not just mentally masturbate for years, as I did. For some, this lukewarm nothingness is fine, but they are insignificant nobodies who will achieve nothing in life. Some are proud to be human, while others need money and fame. Some are drawn to art and knowledge, others to adventure, to be a hero. We believe in a thousand different Gods who are not with us when needed, but sooner or later we realize that there is no other force, only an enduring desire working within us...

At Vodafone, there are continuous internal trainings that can be completed based on recommendations. These trainings are unavoidable if you want to move up to a higher position, which comes with more money and obviously more responsibility. At that time, I was working in a team, and our task was to write fleet contracts, meaning we determined the tariffs, per-minute charges, the amount of data included in the package, how much the basic subscription fee should be for each company, etc. It was a damn crappy job, and I hated it like hell, partly because I simply cannot work in a team where I am not the leader. This was October 2010, 3 months before the birth of Tilt, when the head of the department asked me to come in, he wanted to talk to me. We sat down, and he offered me a higher position, but of course, I had to complete a training for that. Well, fuck, I said to myself. I want to leave all this, but they would tie me down even more, and especially I would tie myself down. To this day, I hate myself for saying yes, because I compromised again, and chose the safe path instead of taking a risk and starting something new that would make me happy, and even if it ended in failure, at least there would be the possibility of self-realization. I was like a typical woman who doesn't leave a shipwrecked relationship, even though she has long known that it doesn't work, she no longer wants to be a part of it, and then the guy comes, smiles sweetly for a week, makes some gesture, and the girl stays in this whole doomed relationship, a joke that's not even funny, just lying to herself and prolonging her suffering.

I had 6 weeks to prepare. I received all the help, and I needed to score 75 points. By then, I had made peace with my fate and was starting to enjoy it. A new position, a leadership role, I started to feel like those real assholes who pretend at high school reunions that they've made something of themselves as middle managers. I took the test, mentally planned my life with more money, and then the results came. 73 points. Damn it. 2 points less than needed. That evening, I drank myself into oblivion, because not only had I given up on myself, but even the job I had deemed worthless didn't pan out. My self-belief collapsed, I hit rock bottom, and experienced the whole thing as a huge failure, but this was the point when I realized I had to change, and it was only a matter of time before I left Vodafone. If I had passed the exam, there would be no LifeTilt today.

June 2011

LifeTilt is booming, the first season of Slim3 is a huge, unimaginable success. By then, I had been in contact with a supplement company for a while, who in December 2011 offered me a leadership position and asked me to work for them. I accepted the offer and handed in my resignation at Vodafone. We started working together with big plans, because by this time, LifeTilt had generated a 300% increase in turnover for this company. I was given a free hand, and among my first measures, I laid the foundations for the women's line, split the company in two, and created a branch exclusively for women. A month after our agreement, problems began, and the owner asked me to stay in the background because my persona was so divisive within the industry that my presence at the company had a negative business impact on him in the eyes of other manufacturers' leaders. I stayed in the background and managed the strings from there. By then, preparations for the second season of Slim3 had begun, which was to establish the aforementioned new women's line at the company. I won't go into too much detail, but it was already clear that we couldn't work together for long, because they thought that by hiring me, they had also bought Tilt, but there is no amount of money for which anyone could get Tilt, and it would be degraded into a marketing channel, a marketing page for a manufacturer, because if that had been the case, its whole essence would have been lost, and Tilt would have crashed into the ground. Our viewpoints diverged more and more, and then half a year after we started working together, we agreed to go our separate ways. I left Vodafone because of the manufacturer, meaning I fell between two stools, so we agreed that I would set up a company, a separate webshop, which would be a secure financial source for me as well, and where I would sell their products.

The webshop was ready, everything was set to launch, and then 3 days before signing the contract, the manufacturer backed out and announced they did not wish to work with me in the future. I had to re-evaluate everything, throw away my previous plans, and rebuild my future from scratch, which at that time looked quite bleak. I don't know who has been kicked in the balls and punched in the stomach at the same time, but I went through something similar in those few weeks. At this point, all my connections with them were severed, and I was left standing like an idiot, feeling very stupid, because I had left Vodafone, and now I didn't even have this. If this hadn't happened, I wouldn't have launched the programs, and I wouldn't have met the woman who inspired the idea of launching my own brand. If this hadn't happened, I wouldn't have even considered starting a movement, for which my own products would provide the financial and economic background.

Experiencing failures is the key, and whether you ultimately emerge from these setbacks as a loser, licking your wounds for a lifetime, chasing a "what if" illusion, or as a winner, learning from your mistakes, you move forward in life stronger. Failures are life's gifts, the strongest force that, in most cases, guides your life in the right direction if you've gone astray. Don't cling to constancy just because you're used to it, kick your partner to the curb if you're suffering in a relationship, because if it's bad now, it won't get better later, the suffering will just last longer, and there's nothing sadder on this earth than compromise. Don't cling to jobs if you feel this isn't the path your heart dictates. Move on, take risks, make your dreams come true even if everyone around you laughs at you, give it your all, put your heart, your energy, everything you have into it, and the results will not be long in coming. Most people cling to point A, where they live, and if that point ever ends, no matter how disappointingly unpromising it may be, they collapse and feel that life has badly screwed them over. But don't forget one thing. Perhaps for your happiness and to experience a full life, you first have to fail at point A, then B and C, to finally reach D, which is you, where you can begin to live in the noblest sense of the word. This requires failures, minutes, weeks, months of consuming difficulty, but you have to experience them and move on.

Life is a competition, a continuous struggle. Sometimes you will fail, and you must fail, because there is no war won without losses and lost battles. Life is a qualification round, and it's up to you how long you stay in the competition and what place you finish in the end. Don't drop out in the first round, don't be among the failures, don't be the rejects.