I Talked About My Failures at FuckUp Nights and Had a Blast

Last Wednesday, I had the privilege of telling one of my stories of failure at FuckUp Nights VOL.15 at The Duke Saloon in Victoria alongside the brilliant David Jam Ramjattan and Melodie Reynolds.

For those of you who haven’t heard of FuckUp Nights, it’s a fantastic, global event that celebrates one of my favorite and, in my opinion, most overlooked growth points: failure. It brings together a group of high-achieving, confident leaders to talk openly about their greatest professional failures in front of a crowd of people. It’s a humbling experience that I’m tremendously grateful to have been a part of.

I talked about one of my greatest failures – while I was the youngest partner in a quickly growing company and by many standards, I was crushing it. But, in the end, I had to escape the cubicle hell to save my sanity.

While it was a brutal learning experience, it was in fact a learning experience, so looking back, I wouldn’t do things differently. As Janet Fitch said, “The phoenix must burn to emerge.” 

I now know exactly what I do and don’t want to do in my life and work. I don’t want to buy into productivity over production; I refuse to choose profits over people; and I won’t prioritize extraction over humanity. 

Instead, I’ve spent the last 20 years as a self-employed woman in technology leveraging business as a force for good, specifically by practicing applied decolonization in the workplace.

I practice applied decolonization every day. From supporting my team as full, perfectly flawed human beings to my work as a mentor, advocate, and thought leader, everything I do is grounded in this framework.

I’ve learned there’s a better way to work, but if I hadn’t done my time in cubicle hell, I might’ve never known how badly we needed it.

So, thank you FuckUp Nights for letting me share my failure and giving me the space to reflect on how far I’ve come. I hope I can inspire others to know the greatest successes lay just beyond our next failures.

A big thank you to David Jam and Melodie for sharing the stage and your own inspiring experiences of failure. I also want to recognize the wonderful people who put this event together: Jim Hayhurst, Tessa Davies, Kurt Archer and Ian Chisholm, for making the evening possible. 

To embracing our failures as a gift to our growth,

Laurel

P.S. If you resonate with my story, I’d love to welcome you into my community! I encourage you to sign up for my newsletter. Together, we can decolonize our lives.