My second job out of college was with a small electronics hardware company that had recently invested in some new technology. They needed a young, hungry sales guy to go out and call brands to advertise with them, and that guy just happened to be me.
The company was called Impart Media Group, and they had just invested in a product called iPoint. Yes, this was pre-iPhone release, so the name may seem cutting-edge today, but the iPod had already been released, proving these guys were as unoriginal as they were horrible business leaders.
The year was 2006, and iPoint was a large TV screen that was positioned inside of airports, public places, subway systems, and other high-traffic venues with the goal of providing information. You could simply walk up to the screen and search, point to, and click on information, and more. Take, for example, if an iPoint kiosk was positioned by your gate at the airport, you could find the weather info at your destination in real time; you could look at event data, and even book a hotel right on the machine. Today, it sounds ridiculous, but in 2006 this was ahead of the curve.
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We cut deals with various content providers to keep people entertained while they stood and stared at them, as well as a ticket company that gave you the ability to buy concert tickets before you took off. We had ten of them stationed at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, and 23-year-old Scott even had a Class B security clearance to the airport, so I could show advertisers what these machines looked like before they purchased them.
For a brief moment in time, I thought we were all going to be millionaires.
Then, two things happened.
First, the leadership at this company was a disaster. I mean, an absolute clown-show group of idiots running an organization. They went from being one version of a company to another, and they just couldn't make the jump to running a media company. They had no business doing what they were doing, and every decision seemed to be as clumsy as the last in meetings.
Second, a little thing called the iPhone was released in January 2007, about 18 months after Impart had invested in the iPoint product. Within minutes of the phone being announced, it was clear and obvious that this company had nothing of value anymore.
I was actually laid off before the end of 2006, and I then went to work at the NBC TV station, starting my media career, so it was over for me anyway, but the point is simple: organizations need a few things on their side to be successful.
Timing and culture.
The product itself wasn't a bad product, but it was a business they didn't really understand, and in addition to that, a little iPoint-type product was released to sit in everyone's hand at those airport gates, changing everyone's eyeline to look at a little screen in their hands instead of a 55' TV screen in the corner.
There have been incredible ideas that have been released in the history of industry, but if the leadership team can't organize and arrange the business, in addition to the product being the right timing and fit, then forget the entire mission.
Fast forward years later, and you see these interactive kiosks in office buildings. They even had an idea to put them in places like Home Depot, where you have hundreds of thousands of SKUs to navigate long aisles, but even that was put on the Home Depot app in the palm of your hand.
Plenty of great products have died inside of bad organizations, and plenty of average products have exploded because the right people were running the business at exactly the right moment.
The lesson for me wasn't that iPoint was some stupid idea. In fact, I think the opposite is true. The idea was probably right. The execution was wrong, the timing was brutal, and the people running the company weren't capable of adapting fast enough when the world changed underneath them. That combination is almost impossible to overcome.
We love to look at successful companies and assume they won because they had the best product. Sometimes they do. But plenty of great products have died inside of bad organizations, and plenty of average products have exploded because the right people were running the business at exactly the right moment. Product matters, but so does everything surrounding the product.
The same thing is true in your career. You can be incredibly talented and still find yourself sitting inside the wrong company, under the wrong leadership team, at the wrong moment in the market. You can work harder, stay later, care more, and still lose because there are forces around you that you simply can't control. That doesn't mean you stop trying, but it does mean you should pay attention to the environment you're trying to succeed inside of.
I thought I had landed at some futuristic technology company that was going to change the way people interacted with information. Instead, I got laid off, watched the iPhone completely change the world, and accidentally landed in the career that would shape the next twenty years of my life.
Sometimes the thing that looks like a failure is really just the market telling you it's time to point your attention somewhere else, so don't allow a weird stint or an ill-timed venture to get you down.