Over the weekend, I watched the documentary, You Can See Everything. You might have seen the trailers online or memes based off of that, where Elizabeth Holmes is looking at the camera and saying, “Why would I deceive you? I have nothing to hide” with big eyes and a real close up shot.
It tells the story of the founder of Theranos, a startup who raised billions and billions of dollars with the claim that with a single drop of blood, they could run all sorts of lab tests.
Later it was found that maybe that was not correct and she was sentenced to jail. And this documentary follows the last 30 days of her life as a free person, about seven years after she was convicted.
Business Lessons From “You Can See Everything”
But in this documentary, there were a few business lessons I wanted to share, some takeaways or ways you can view things that happened within that film and apply them to how you view running a business and some of the dangers and pitfalls to avoid or pursue.
Let’s dive right into the three key things I want to talk about today.
- Uncertainty and judgment
- The dangers of fake it till you make it.
- And the importance of a strong inner circle.
Uncertainty In Business
One of the interesting things about this film is that the two key producers, Lance and Nathan, were unsure if they actually were filming anything interesting or not until they were talking after a day of filming and they realized that the same thing that they both witnessed, they had very opposite opinions of what exactly had happened.
And if you watch this documentary, you will have a similar experience. You will sit next to your spouse, your friend, someone you’ll be talking to across the country, and you will have seen the same movie, but you will have quite a bit of uncertainty about what’s happening. And you’ll notice that you’re actually filling in a lot of gaps yourself.
This, I think, is a key lesson for business owners because you have to be okay with this level of uncertainty in business.
This is NOT a film where you leave black and white.
- Here is a good guy.
- Here is a bad guy.
- This character did this.
- This character did that.
- I know the story.
You will watch this and you will have your own opinion, but it’s not locked in. When you run a business, the same is true.
If you’re trying to wait for this level of certainty, this black and white, “This is good. This is bad. This is the path forward. This is not. I should go left, not right. I should price my product exactly at X.” You will be constantly disappointed!
People who want to start a business, oftentimes don’t actually take that leap because they want to see that all those lights ahead are green before they start going.
Someone who does start a business oftentimes finds out that they don’t know a lot of what’s happening and they figure it out as they go along. There’s a TON of uncertainty.
Even within the moment of making a decision, there’s little feedback to know if that was a good decision or a poor decision.
To me, that’s what someone really means when they say being an entrepreneur is risky. What they’re saying is not necessarily you should be betting the house on a venture you hope works out.
It’s more so you’re living in this space of chaos and unknown.
And in this particular film, the individual characters that are in this movie you watch, and you have this sense of unknown.
At the end of a three-hour presentation, you probably feel like you know less about them than you went in knowing!
You don’t leave with more clarity. And a business is much like that. More information doesn’t necessarily help.
Judgment in Running A Business
Within that, the second part of this lack of information and the unknown is judgment.
When that’s the case, and there aren’t clear pathways of exactly what to do, you have to rely on your own judgment, your own best guess.
This basically is weighing the nuances as best you can and coming to an approximation in a gray area without the black and white.
One fun takeaway is watching this film, you can FEEL this level of uncertainty. If you watched it and that was too uncomfortable for you, maybe starting a business is not the best choice for you because you will live in that feeling day in and day out!
AI Judgment Tangent
I would say as a slight tangent, this is one area I’ve started to notice interesting about AI.
If you look at things written by AI and prompts, it tends to be very black and white, very ones and zeros.
There’ll be things like, “I used to think this….but now I know this.”
That tends to be the type of a format you’ll notice jump out at you about AI.
And that’s one reason I think people like to use it.
It can help them feel that there’s this level of certainty when the real world actually is so many more shades of gray, and business mimics those shades of grey and NOT black and white certainty.
You can read a previous post if you’re curious to hear more about AI fits in running a business.
The Danger Of “Fake It Till You Make It”
This is a case where this is someone who made big, bold claims, (maybe with the idea that she could make those become a reality) and in failing so she’s ended up in prison.
Other well-known entrepreneurs have made similar bold claims and sometimes have been able to actually achieve those and they’ve become heroes.
It’s a live by the sword, die by the sword type of a situation.
The fake it till you make it plan CAN be an okay approach. I find for real world people, normally it’s best to NOT fake it on such a grand scale.
If you already are doing work in a certain realm of business and you’d like to expand to something adjacent and take a step on a project that’s a little bit further down the road, that’s a level of fake it till you make it that’s a little bit less majorly damaging.
Going from zero all the way to promises about revolutionizing an industry, that’s a lot of risk tied into that where you’re going to risk your entire reputation.
As a matter of fact, on the fake it till you make it side, if someone brand new is starting a business, I say starting a business with your name as part of the business can be a good practice because it helps people trust with you. People don’t know the product, they don’t care about that so much. They’re going to first get to know, like, and trust you. So your word and your bond is what leads to actually getting your first few sales for a client.
So all that fake it till you make it can be of a risk!
This film is an example of the highest use case of that with an interesting twist that at times when you’re an entrepreneur, people around you might wish ill upon you. Maybe they are self-conscious that they didn’t take that same level of risk in launching their own venture and they look forward to tearing you down and you failing so that they can be justified and not doing that more risky endeavor?!?!
I’d say there’s some of the pitchforks that came out within this business storyline, are chasing down someone who is trying to stretch and reach.
Again, I’m not doing a lot of judgment about whether it’s justified or not, but just in your own world, some people might not be your cheerleader and it might surprise you. That can be an indication that maybe they’re trying to justify their own worldview and a reminder that it is not actually personal about you.
That ties into fake it till you make it because they would like to not take those steps themselves.
A Strong Inner Circle For Business Support
The third and final one I’ll talk about is the importance of a strong inner circle. So in this world of chaos and uncertainty and trying to have good judgment, it’s really easy to get lost.
And it’s key that you have a inner circle of people that you can talk to and trust.
This can be friends, it can be family, it can be a business consultant, it can be a large variety of people, but there are times where you just need to hear yourself talk through a thing to better understand what’s going on. And if you don’t, you can get really lost in the weeds and stuck in this sort of parallel universe.
It’s interesting as someone who watched this documentary, there are times where another person comes on screen who isn’t one of the key main people and the feeling of relief that you got of, “Well, what is their experience of this?” as a sounding board.
It gives you some more perspective as the viewer in this particular film.
This idea of having a core inner circle is very important. The wrong inner circle, who’s maybe tearing you down when they shouldn’t, can lead you astray.
The wrong inner circle who isn’t helping maybe draw a line in the sand and warning you about dangerous behaviors isn’t helping you as well. Some cheerleaders can be helpful. Some people who will let you know when you’re in a gray area and messing up can also be helpful.
So anyways, a little bit of an odd video here comparing some strange, trippy three-hour documentary to running a business. But if you’ve seen it, I thought this might be something that you would enjoy, a little out of the box. Have a great rest of your day.
Bye.
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