The 'Failure Circuit'

There's a very entertaining article by Susan Berfield in this week's Business Week, "I Was a Loser, Baby, So Why Don't You Pay Me?" chronicling one Bill Bartmann, a fellow who makes his living as a motivational speaker by touting his failures (which he's apparently had aplenty). And what can be more compelling than a success that failed. Bartmann's specialized in those.

His first success-failure was in the oil biz. In the 1980's, he built a fortune manufacturing oil pipes, but when crude stopped bubblin' he racked up a bit of debt.

Debt? Did somebody say debt?

Bartmann's next fortune was made on bad debts. He founded a company called Commercial Financial Services that, at one point, was the world's largest holder of bad consumer debt. The success of CFS put Bartmann on the Forbes list of 400 richest Americans. But CFS "secret sauce" was that it owned the debt outright. Which meant that it also owed the debt outright - at one point $14.5 billion worth.

Well, CFS ended up in a big tangle, with fraud and conspiracy indictments against Bartmann (of which he was acquitted), and personal bankruptcy.

On to the next money-making scheme.

As a businessman he had used the story of his early life to put lenders at ease, motivate employees, and in general establish his credibility as someone who can prosper in any circumstances. His setbacks began feeling like an affirmation of sorts: The wild arcs of his life offered valuable lessons. "I think I am the message, the answer," he says. "I'm selling the one thing everyone needs: self-confidence."

All I can say is that it takes one self-confident man to sell self-confidence. (I almost wrote "one self-confidence man."  Hmmmm.) Here's what Bartmann has to say about his new venture:

"The secret of success is elegantly simple, like the law of gravity. This is how the world works: You need to be willing to take risks. You don't because you are afraid of failure; you are worried about what people will think. And that's because of low self-esteem. To succeed, you have to raise your self-esteem."

Berfield writes that the motivation business is big -  a $10 billion industry - "even as its very premise--that its advice can change lives--remains unproven."

Apparently, among the most successful current breed of motivational speakers are those who've overcome some dire adversity, a list that includes:

The guy who chopped off his arm to save his life (Aron Ralston); the woman who treated herself for breast cancer in the South Pole (Jerri Nielsen); the prison guy who became a top chef (Jeff Henderson)...[and] Scott Waddle, commander of the nuclear submarine that accidentally sank a Japanese fishing boat in 2001, killing nine.

The latter makes $10K a pop for talking about how he overcame his own personal dire adversity. (I wonder how much the fishing boat survivors got.)

Berfield notes that there " may be as many as 15,000 people trying to make a living as professional speakers." The emphasis is mine, but the staggering number is Berfield's. There's no data on how many of them are in the motivational category, but my guess would be about 80-90% of so. (Thinks of every sales conference you ever went to....)

Bartmann's goal, according to Berfield, is "to do for failure what Betty Ford did for alcoholism and Susan Komen did for breast cancer."

With Bartmann forging the way, I see the possibility of a new calling for myself.

No, I can't look to any truly spectacular failures. I never had to saw my arm off or perform my own lumpectomy. (I did pierce my own ears when I was in college. Does that count?) No one, as far as I know, ever died because of anything I did as a technology marketer (although one customer did call in tears saying that she was going to lose her job because she'd purchased our product; caveat emptor and all that, but I did feel bad for her, especially as we were in no position to refund her $50K software license).

But I have worked in a number of companies that are no longer around, from mere $5M outfits well up to companies with revenues - or was it losses? - in the billions.

Of course, I have no desire to motivate an audience. No, my motivations would be more modest. I'd want people to identify with me and my work experiences. To empathize with my workplace woes - and share with me theirs. (And I just know that the audience will have plenty of them.) Oh, and maybe have a few laughs.

Ah, there's my problem.

Not once, in all the motivational books I've read, from all of the motivational speakers I've heard, have I once read or hear something that was actually funny.

At least not intentionally.