№ 73: Finding Faith
How pursuing entrepreneurship taught me faith
At 16 years old, I renounced God.
For the first 16 years of my life, I grew up in a Catholic household, attended church every Sunday, and even did a brief 1-year stint as an altar server.
I can’t remember what triggered it, but I began questioning my faith.
From there, I went on an atheistic crusade, rolling my eyes at anyone who started talking about their faith and religion. At the peak of my atheist beliefs, I thought religious faith was for delusional idiots who lacked any grasp on reality.
At 26 years old, I went on an LSD trip, which I still struggle to describe because the experience transcends words, but it softened up my atheist beliefs.
Skip forward to today, at 32 years old, I still don’t believe in a particular God or religion, but I do consider myself spiritual; there is something greater than myself, something more to being human than sensory experience, and the greater whole of which we are part is divine in nature.
Over the last two years, and particularly more so in the last 6 months, my belief in faith has increased.
Why has this happened? Well, I suspect it has to do with entrepreneurship. Let me explain.
Entrepreneurs are big dreamers. In essence, they have to have the ability to see what others cannot. They pursue a vision knowing it might not come true, and that thought alone is enough to scare many of us into a pacifying life of quiet obedience. Yet, entrepreneurs feel compelled to overcome this and place their faith in building a better future.
After 16 years as an apostate, I finally understand faith. I understand the value of placing your heart on an uncertain future and can see now how religion helps put the vicissitudes of life into perspective.
Don’t get me wrong, faith is not the absence of doubt — in fact, faith requires doubt because it is the act of moving forward even when you don’t see the next step with absolute clarity.
No Gamble, No Future
When I say faith, I mean the Buddhist definition. It comes from Pali, the language of the original Buddhist texts. Faith, in Pali, is saddhā, which means “to place the heart upon.”
Just over 2 years ago, I placed my heart upon a better future and left my professional poker career behind to start a Vietnamese coffee business. It was pretty scary at the time. I had no idea how to sell, no experience in the coffee industry, and no clue how to run a business.
But what I did have was some money, a Kindle reader and a broken heart; a powerful motivator to change. I turned myself into a learning machine. Through reading books, it allowed me to figure things out and level up my skills.
I also couldn’t help but notice in most business biographies, there is a moment where the founder’s faith outstrips proof.
In Shoe Dog, Phil Knight gave up Blue Ribbon Sports and put his faith in developing his own shoe. Knight’s new business went on to become one of the world’s most recognised brands in the world: Nike.
In 1948, David Ogilvy went to New York and, despite never having written an ad in his life, put his faith in starting an advertising agency.
In poker, you learn how to be rational and think probabilistically. Investors have the same mental model too. So, when you think probabilistically and evaluate David Ogilvy’s situation, you’d think he was a madman. Why the hell would you want to go to New York City and compete with the likes of Leo Burnett, Young&Rubicam or J. Walter Thompson? These were major advertising agencies with established pedigrees.
Compared to Ogilvy’s agency — then called Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson & Mather (HOBM) — which had a handful of tiny accounts, minimal funding, an unproven president and a director who had no practical experience in advertising. As an investor, this is not exactly the best bet.
But less than a decade later, Ogilvy would produce a succession of advertising campaigns that put him on the map as a creative force and built his agency into a powerhouse that attracted the biggest advertisers in America.
As someone who is a former high-stakes poker player, dabbled in investing and started businesses, I’ve noticed this: You want to be a probabilistic thinker as an investor and poker player, but a deterministic thinker as an entrepreneur. Because if the world were full of probabilistic thinkers, no one would build the next Ogilvy&Mather, SpaceX, or Nike.
Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe — Voltaire
Your Beliefs Control Your Reality
In the recent Acquired podcast, Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO of NVIDIA, talks about how truly difficult it is to build a company. It’s so difficult that if he could re-visit his 30-year-old self, he would tell himself not to do it.
Jensen goes on to talk about the the superpower an entrepreneur possesses: tricking their brain into thinking how hard can it be?
What Jensen is talking about is psychological conditioning. It’s essentially turning confirmation bias into a superpower.
Your brain is always looking for evidence to confirm what you’ve told it. So, if the story in your mind is My life is shit and it never works out, your brain is going to cherry-pick everything in your life to reinforce that belief.
There is a reason why good things tend to happen to people who believe they deserve it. They go around thinking, “How hard can it be? How can I solve this and get myself out of this situation?” Their brain will cherry-pick the things that show life has the capacity to be better.
Your mind is merely doing its job. It’s just looking for proof to reinforce the reality you have created for yourself in your mind. Be intentional about what you say to yourself. Pay attention to your thoughts.
I don’t think people take the space inside of their heads seriously enough. Beliefs are powerful because your beliefs are the starting point of what you do and who you become.
Will Anyone Hire This Agency?
I can’t begin to tell you how many times I laid awake at night in the last 2 years, questioning all my life choices — Should I have quit poker? Can I even sell my first bag of coffee before I turn 30 years old? Can I land my first copywriting client with no portfolio or experience?
Yet through all the anxiety and rumination, I did the only thing I could: keep following my curiosity and my intuition.
It was seeing myself come through time and time again that made me begin to develop faith in myself and the universe.
Once more, I’m betting it all again.
In August, my friend and I decided to leave each of our previous businesses behind and join forces to start a short-form video marketing agency — Bloomstory. It’s a new agency struggling for its life. We’re competing against major players; FlightStory, Verb and FanBytes. We’re also operating on a shoestring budget. Not exactly the best bet.
But there’s something in this business that I’ve placed my heart upon. It’s the combination of everything I love: advertising, behavioural science, technology, creativity and media.
I know the adventure ahead is going to be long, tough and gruelling. I can’t exactly see what the next steps with clarity are.
The only thing I can do is wake up every day and take one step forward in faith.
Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you — Saint Augustine