Daniel Escott · @WolfOfWaterSt
15th Jul 2019 from TwitLonger
This is different.
To open a business is easy, to keep it open is an art.
People see the successful CEOs, the Presidents, the executives and think it must be so cool. What they don't see is what got them to where they are. They don't see the hundreds of failed ideas and businesses closed to get to that golden nugget.
When Iceberg Esports started, I was a young student who found something he loved and wanted to take a shot. Within my first month I had forged relationships and partnerships that would become some of my closest friends. We had so much confidence that it would work that I ended up spending every bit of savings I had to get to that legendary inflection point. When I ran out of savings, the company started paying for things with credit cards. Only a few thousand dollars, but for someone with nothing left, it could've been millions.
Then came along the investor. Hotshot bigwig from LA, he was starting a fund to make magic happen. He was excited, he was supportive. He didn't care about the numbers, he said he believed in the team and what we stood for. I come from a place where your word means everything. Handshake deals are business as usual, and when you say something you mean it. After he guaranteed funding, he said the money would flow in a matter of weeks. Start building the business. Build the brand. We'll make waves.
What we didn't know, was that we were fools. I was a fool.
A month after the money was said to be flowing, there wasn't a penny left. He disappeared. No guarantee, no document, no piece of paper would return a call, email, or text. He was gone, and he left us high and dry. Then we realized we weren't the iceberg, we were the Titanic. We covered what we could, even asking our staff to put in their own hard-earned money. They did. It wasn't enough.
We kept everyone updated, but when the time came that we knew he wasn't coming back with a cheque, it didn't make the conversation any easier. There were tears, there were fights, friends yelling at one another. None of us knew what to do, it's not exactly a textbook case study. We parted ways, we did what we could, expended what was left of our relationships trying to mitigate the damage. Then it was done.
There's nothing easy about running a business. But closing one, especially one that had become so important to you, is like losing a part of yourself. What's worse is having to go through the process. It's not a quick signature on a form. It's months of conversations and issues, it's constantly reopening old wounds, constantly revisiting that you're a failure.
When it was finally over, I felt free. For a day. But when a day became a week, a week became a month, months became several, you forget why you're around. Depression is a hell of a thing, and I don't care why you ended up in that hole or how long you've been there, but if you've found a way to crawl away from that hellscape you have my greatest admiration. Once you're there, you're never really "out" of it. It just stacks. But just because you don't know what to do with your life right now doesn't mean you should do nothing.
One year later.
When Max came to me with the idea of a WNBA team, everything clicked. My experience made sense. There are many people that go through the business world without ever seeing the darker side. If there's one thing I learned throughout that process, it was that young people don't know anything, especially that they're young. It is an incredible boon to feel like you can do anything, but it also greatly hinders your ability to recognize there are many things you really don't know.
I make it a habit to say yes to opportunities as they arise, if for no other reason than I get bored easily, and when I'm bored for too long I descend back down that lovely spiral of having no purpose. But this is different. This wasn't just a business opportunity. This was something so much more, so much bigger than myself.
This was an opportunity to inspire generations.
Forget all the nonsense about making a name for yourself. Don't pay any mind to the talk about "defining moments". The moments that define you have already happened, and will continue to happen for as long as you exist. I do this because I believe in it. I do this because a whole nation believes in it. We're at a point in history (or herstory) where we can actually do something that's worth a damn, and by god I will do it. This wasn't us having an idea, this is an idea having us.
We started this bid as a conversation. That conversation turned into several. Then it became negotiations. Then it became a team. Then it became something else entirely. There's no word for exactly what it is now, but to put it into words best, I'd have to say it's a movement. It's just a team, but it's so much more than a team. I've never seen people from St. John's to Esquimalt, Niagara to Nunatsiavut, share the same passion and excitement before this came about.
The questions people like Doug Smith have raised are entirely fair. We haven't released many details on what we've been working on for 20-hour days over the last three months, which seems a tad silly. It's entirely frustrating to say that we can't say everything and we can't say why we can't say everything. It sounds a lot like the infamous "I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain." I get it. But speaking generally, when you're dealing with negotiations between massive organizations and powerful institutions, there's always some degree of confidentiality involved. It's important to recognize, however, that it would be impossible to get to this point on smoke and mirrors.
We've poured our hearts and souls into making this a reality. We've accomplished so much already in the past three months, to the point where we don't need to "sell" people on the idea that women's sports are professional sports anymore. In April it was like trying to explain quantum physics to a turtle. Today it's treated like a no-brainer. There's an awful long road ahead in moving the dial, but we're headed in the right direction. That's the direction I want to keep us moving towards. I won't even take a job with the eventual franchise, my only motivation in making this bid happen is to leave this industry and this country in a better position than when I started.
But I get it. How on god's green earth can two twenty-somethings who've never worked a day in the industry make something like this happen? Well, it's not really that simple. How could a college dropout create Facebook? How could a Banker selling books from his garage create Amazon?
Labels can be valuable because they give you a base set of expectations. But labels can also needlessly limit yourself to what you tell yourself you can do, and that is entirely the point of this project. I hope to never have to explain to future generations that the reason half of them are paid more than the other half is because of what we call them. I hope to never have to tell them that only half of them can be a professional athlete. I hope those conversations die here, today, with this project.
This is all to say one thing, but I won't even say it myself. There are three quotes that helped pull up from my own personal hellscape, from three people I admire greatly. When you put them together, it gives me a good reason to keep moving forward. I read them every day when I wake up, I read them when I go to bed, and I read them when I need a reminder of why I'm putting myself through one of the most high-stakes, stress-building, anxiety-inducing, sleep-depriving ventures I've ever experienced. That is:
"I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I did yesterday, and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you." - Neil deGrasse Tyson
"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self." - Ernest Hemingway
"Remember why we do the work." - Barack Obama
If anyone wants to have a chat, by all means reach out. I'll answer everything I can to the best that I am able. If I can't comment on something, I'll say as much, and when I can comment you'll be the first I reach out to.
This is an incredible community, and every single one of you makes this a little bit easier to wake up every day and work towards. You're all breathtaking.
Best regards,
Daniel J Escott