Inside the process of failing forward—a note from the founder
Hi wrestling fans, Gabby Lord-Klein here.
In this post & video I share business related things about Transition Wrestling, talk about my decision to end the Kickstarter campaign—for now—and outline our forward direction.
This post is intentionally transparent.
It probably doesn’t matter either way, but I am not entirely sure if I’ve lost it or if I am finally just getting the courage to expose a desire I’ve had from the beginning of this process:
I want everyone that might be interested to be able to join the conversation about the creative, business and technical components that are going toward making this platform a reality—if you’re in the real world or studying literally anything, this could be fun for you!
Although our project will have a home on Kickstarter forever, we are cancelling the current campaign. We owe incredible thanks to everyone that financially backed or shared our campaign in round one! Your belief in what we’re doing will be pivotal moving forward.
I realized the for-sure need to call it approximately 36 hours ago. I am confident in the decision from an incredibly analytical and realistic standpoint. The campaign was getting shared, but not gaining any financial traction and that’s because I overlooked key components about the preparation and execution.
From there it’s been all about recognizing what went wrong and how we could do it differently in order to regroup thoughtfully and get back to forward motion.
Businesses that use failure as a means for success,
- Openly analyze past mistakes while going to great lengths to learn from failure
- Review past decisions, especially if they did not lead to success while conducting post-mortems
Last night after brainstorming with several others I went through a solo post-mortem about the campaign process.
8 things I learned
- The campaign validated our assumption that women’s wrestling coverage is in demand—we created some decent sized waves.
- A lot of what I had the team focus on bringing to life in the planning process prior to go-live was unnecessary.
- Everything takes more time than anticipated—especially social media.
- I didn’t spend enough time on our marketing and communication strategies. We actually had too many ideas and not enough built out to share.
- I undervalued guidance to have lots followers first. I didn’t weigh this heavily because I assumed reliance on the niche market and figured wrestling would be enough to magically attract wrestlers (poor judgement). I based things off the fact that I am an early adopter, I like to give things I like a chance right away and then unfollow later if I don’t like it. I don’t think a lot of people sit in that segment of the market.
- I prepared us for an audience that knew what we were trying to do, and what Kickstarter was. This is obviously not the case.
- In just two weeks, we came up with so many new angles and ideas. The vision we thought was big is just the beginning.
- Trying to manage a job in finance + running a campaign is really fun, but incredibly taxing on the time available in a day, mental space, emotions and my reliance on caffeine.
We had several issues, but they can all be linked back to timing and a lack of foundational engagement with the wrestling community.
Moving forward
We’re obviously not running away. We’ve identified a need we’re passionate about meeting.
During the month of August, we’ll be focused on developing our network by actively sharing more information and connecting with wrestlers, parents, coaches and fans.
We’ll be sharing more coverage that embodies our mission and vision while building a base to launch a more well-prepared foundation for the campaign to make the idea of comprehensive coverage a reality. We are actively seeking placeholders from individuals & businesses that are open to financial commitments of any amount. If that’s you, contact us here.
We’ve got some stuff queued up that we’re really excited to share.
Our message of community involvement to help us grow remains consistent. If you’d like to explain to someone what we’re doing, please share our void campaign—the link is still active & we’re proud of our work, I just didn’t have things in place to execute it properly and that’s what we’re working on right now.
Ways to be involved & updated
We want you to be part of our journey!
- Leave us some feedback.
- Follow along via Facebook, Twitter & Instagram
- If you’re a coach, let your female wrestlers know Transition Wrestling is a thing.
- If you want to explore a partnership with us to spread the word, reach out.
- If you know of a contact that might be interested in our efforts, help us get connected.
What an incredible time to be part of women’s wrestling!
Gabby
