Carolyn Jack

Editor and CEO, Geniocity.com
A project of The Genius Group LLC

Abandonment isn’t a creative solution

I knew I’d have to learn a lot of things when I started my business. But I never expected to learn that I couldn’t trust friends and colleagues to keep their word.

Since embarking on Geniocity.com two years ago, I’ve had my three most important teammates walk away from their commitments to my company at critical moments. I’ve also had two creative partners in an important, long-term, artistic effort drop it flat, had a significant vendor break his verbal commitment at the last minute and discovered that several friends who promised help or involvement were never going to follow through. None of them were my employees – they were creative collaborators and fellow entrepreneurs. Equals. 

I made every effort I could think of to give each of them space, encouragement, understanding, time, to assure them of my commitment to them and our mutual success and of my willingness to adjust to their current circumstances.             

It made no difference. Most of them, I’ve basically never heard from again. Two communicate once in a while, but the working relationships I had with them have died.

I guess the obvious thing to assume here is that something’s wrong with me.

And I’ve tried to figure out what. In nearly every case, these were people I cared about deeply. We’d either started as friends or become that way after working together and shared similar missions, tastes, senses of humor. I enjoyed their company and they seemed to enjoy mine. I thanked them, praised them, stood by them, apologized for any inconvenience I thought I caused them, asked about their health, listened to their many troubles, helped as much as I could, cut them slack, bought them coffee and worked furiously to make our mutual dreams come true. They gave every appearance of sharing my devotion to our projects and of liking to work with me.

Right up until they bailed out.

Those who gave reasons all had different ones – financial stress, an ill family member, pressing business of other kinds, depression, legal troubles. All legit, I guess. But the fact remains that when the start-up and artistic processes got tough, when obstacles arose, they quit.

That staggered me. I’ve had to pick up the responsibilities they dropped and try to carry them all myself . But what hurts most is not that they ignored their promises – even their contractual obligations, in some cases - but that they dumped our friendship along with our collaboration. Starting a business was supposed to be fun. I was going to work with some of the people I liked best in the world on something we really cared about.

Instead, I find myself on my own, grimmer and more determined than ever to make this business succeed, to give my artistic projects life and to resist distrusting others and my own judgment. None of it’s easy.

Was I naive? Am I wrongheaded, inept, offensive? Is my idea bad? Am I a poor judge of character? Simply unlucky?

I don’t know. Another longtime friend sent me a message last night, saying he might not be able to follow through on his part of our multiyear project that’s finally nearing completion. I hope I won’t have to hear that someone else I’ve loved and counted on will solve his problems by letting me down.