What Entrepreneurs Can Actually Learn from The Fyre Festival

Where were you when the Fyre Festival catastrophically failed in April 2017?

Based on the timing of when it happened, I must have been at home, in my apartment, working remotely doing marketing for clients in the pet industry.

I remember seeing the tweets — yes, the cheese sandwich included — and thinking, in an acronym, “WTF?”.

For some reason, I don’t actually remember watching the original promo video when it came out. I mean, I watched it when all this shit went down, of course, but I don’t remember being swept up in the original conversation of it all.

But I do remember seeing it as a total failure and the first thought that came to my head was this: it’s just a reality show, or some trick or something. No one can actually, seriously, catastrophically fail that bad. Can they?

Yes, they can. And there are now two documentaries — one on Netflix and one on Hulu — to prove it.

By now, many people have seen at least one or the other documentary, if not both.

I saw both in one day. I started the Netflix one on the treadmill in the morning and continued to the Hulu one while making dinner that night.

As I watched both documentaries, there were so many “WTF” moments I couldn’t even count. And from the amount of conversation I’ve seen across social media since then, I’m not the only one.

First, this guy actually went to suck someone’s d*ck for some water to “save” the festival (as if that actually would’ve saved this disaster). I’m not even kidding.

Second…well, Billy, man. What on earth is with that guy?

I agree with the staff. I can’t tell if he’s a total genius or completely insane. Probably a little bit of both. He actually reminds me a little bit of a serial killer character in a book I read recently called The One.

Not only did he just not care about how he was about to potentially screw over thousands of people, but he was totally confident that everything he did was the right thing. I know, he’s a sociopath. But still.

But even with all of this absolute craziness happening, I still think there are positive lessons fellow — more ethical — entrepreneurs can learn from this entire shitshow of a situation.

1. A little bit of confidence can get you anywhere

If you watched both documentaries, you know the extent to which Billy lied about pretty much everything to everyone. He was routinely referred to as a pathological liar because it just seems like he doesn’t know what to do but lie.

He lied about the amount of money he had, the return on investment, and even how much stock he had with Facebook.

OK. Most of us feel imposter syndrome even when we know for 100% fact we are telling the complete truth and nothing but the truth.

This guy, on the other hand, was more convincing telling lie after lie because of how much confidence he had in himself. It was like he truly believed every single word he said.

It’s interesting timing for this to come out as my word of the year is confidence. Well, I got a good lesson from him.

If you believe in what you’re doing, even just a little bit, take that little bit and make it the core of your message. Make it the entirety of what you know and believe in. You’ll be much more likely to convince potential investors, clients, partners, etc. of the same.

2. When shit goes south, be transparent

It’s so much better to admit your mistakes, be honest, and do what you need to do to make it right than it is to try and fool everyone and pass off the blame.

Of course, in hindsight, everyone interviewed says, “I wanted to tell him! I wanted to say we should tell everyone!”

Okay. Sure. Even if you did, it didn’t work.

During my time in journalism school, I learned an extremely valuable lesson that sticks with me to this day:

It’s so much better to admit your mistakes, be honest, and do what you need to do to make it right than it is to try and fool everyone and pass off the blame.

Take BP as an example. The oil spill was a mess. The PR disaster was almost even more so.

Why? They didn’t take credit. They didn’t say, “yes, this was our fault — let us do what we can to fix it.”

The same thing happened here. Instead of bowing out as soon as he found out it was logistically impossible to put on something like this, he kept going.

Now, let me back up for a second, because there’s a lot of inspirational quotes and information out there about “when you fail, don’t back down! Don’t give up! Keep going! Keep pushing!”

But I think there’s a really huge solid line when it comes to the difference between giving up because your inner self is questioning your motives (a notion referred to as imposter syndrome) and when every single piece of evidence says you should not be doing this.

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Anyway, I think that’s it in terms of positive lessons I’ve gleaned from this situation so far. If I think of anything else, I’ll add to this. But I’d like to hear from you: what do you think we, as entrepreneurs, can learn from this entire fiasco?

Also, wouldn’t this make for an amazing dystopian novel? #authorthoughts