How I Failed: I became an arrogant, egotistical knobhead - Dave Foreman, Managing Partner at Praetura Ventures

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0:37This means by the time I get to interviews, the applications that come from Otter are on a completely different level. The whole process is quicker too, so ultimately we get to hire the best people in less time. So if you want to upgrade your hiring, check out otter.com forward slash secret leaders. That's otta.com forward slash secret leaders. there was a week in like 2018 that i just hit the wall and i basically you know i was like i remember i was like a zombie i went to work i did what i had to do i come home and i basically just like the classic sit on your bed rocking back and forward just like just what the fuck is wrong with me this isn't what i want for my life this isn't where i want to go this isn't the the character i want to be.

1:24That's Dave Foreman, the managing partner at Prytura Ventures. He's not here to talk about a failure in business like normal, although his failure did seep into his work. Instead, he's here to tell us about a failure of character. We're doing this bite-sized series because failure is hardly ever talked about, despite it being our greatest teacher. So it proved for Dave, who used to be a knobhead. His words, not mine. This is how he turned his life and himself around.

1:56Dave's adult life can be split into two, before and after one particular week in 2018 when he was forced to confront who he'd become. I kind of remember it, I'd say, about a week of kind of just being on my own, either in my house or wandering around or whatever it was, where it just became pretty fucking obvious to me that I'd become a knobhead and I was failing all the relationships I was in I was not I wasn't being a great sort of business leader I wasn't I'd got divorced from or was gonna get divorced from my now ex-wife I wasn't a great mate to my mates I wasn't a great son to my parents like I just was an egotistical self-centered uh arrogant knob and that's quite a moment where you just go like Jesus I never thought of thought myself as like a bad person I never thought of myself as you know as a as an individual that people might not like you know i was on the outside you know relatively smart relatively successful had my own business some external trappings of wealth you know all of the the bullshit you know the flashy car the watch the whatever it might be you know the house and it kind of all goes out the window when you realize that people just don't like you like you just aren't a good person and i can't look back and say anything else other than I wasn't a very good person.

3:39If I'd have known me, I wouldn't have wanted to spend time with me. Dave looks back at moments from before this week of reckoning and just can't believe how he behaved. I remember being in rooms with incredibly smart people who've been there, seen it and done it, and almost thinking to myself, they should be sitting out there listening to me. I had the opportunity in what I did to be in rooms with people like Matt Moulding, right? And I'd be sat there trying to make him listen to me. like which is fucking nuts um i i would and i would just talk and i would i would you know do prep work and i'd do like you know you do the you know the back the back work of of whatever it was the analysis the the writing a document the reviewing lots of things and i was entirely going about it with a view to proving just as smart i was not what's the right thing to do not not what's the commercial decision here not who am i what is the goal that we are trying to achieve it was it was purely to try and prove to people that i was smart i think i'd almost got to the point where i would prefer a a compliment on the work i'd done than a we've actually achieved what we're all trying to set out to achieve here um and i just didn't listen to people i just didn't listen to people i would almost and i think this is like this is just painful to say but like i was in i was in rooms with you know incredibly successful founders people who've founded businesses that have gone on to be sold for billions and i was talking down to them about some shit that i had done like and you're just like you look back and you're what on earth are you doing i should have been sat there like i would do now which is i am listening to every words you've got to say i am soaking up every single single thing i am i am here i am a sponge i want to learn from you you know i there's a there's this there's a statement that people saying who were in the business now who knew me back then and they said people in 2018 were told and this is like verbatim dave won't talk to you dave required but that doesn't mean he doesn't like you like literally people who joined the business were like just told like this guy is just a bit weird a bit intense and you'll think that he hates you and he'll talk down to you and but you just you know just just just let that go i mean what a fucking what an awful thing for people to to say about you right what a terrible thing that's like he won't talk to you why the fuck wouldn't i talk to them like it's ridiculous but i was just so caught i was caught up in my own absolute inflated overindulgent sense of brilliance.

6:30Although it all came to a head in that week, Dave says it was a series of people making their feelings known and voting with their feet, which included his wife and his friends. You get invited to the trips because it probably would have been more awkward to not, right? But it wasn't that, it just, they just drifted away. you know they just they just stops and you come to you come to events and you'd be you know you do you do the lads trip away right so we're in the lads trip away stage of your life and um i think everyone plays up to a character role in that and you'd play up to the character and they'd mention they'd sort of mention it and it might be jokey but it probably isn't really but it just and then you realize that between those events you don't talk to them you don't you don't spend any time with them you don't actually have that many mates you have acquaintances and you have people who you go away with who for whom it was a fun thing and i played up to a played up to a caricature right that's that's what i did i played up to a caricature on those events the caricature caricature being slightly arrogant make jokes about it you know we're better than other people those all those jokes that you can imagine you know lads on tour we were i was part of the absolute worst of that dave wonders how he'd actually become this person i think it was a lot of the worst things about me right i think when i you know i was i was always competitive i was always very you know i put a lot of time and effort in school I worked very hard.

8:06I worked for an investment bank where they kind of taught you to be a bit of an arrogant wanker. There was definitely a work hard play hard culture, definitely a culture of we're the best and we know it and you know isn't that great. I think it was just a drip drip drip of lots of things that kind of played on the worst of my insecurities that sort of said you know I had this burning desire to be the smartest kid in the room right and even if I wasn't I had a of burning desire to prove that I was, or at least give the illusion that I was. I became less and less tolerant of things that I thought were either beneath me or people who weren't as smart as I thought I was.

8:55It was a drip, drip, drip, and then I hit the wall. Dave's mum said she loved him but didn't always like him. That sticks in his mind. He wanted to change that, but first he had to hit that wall in that fateful week. And then I just remember kind of getting home and sort of just... I think the best way of saying it was like a zombie. I just didn't do anything. I just, you know, you normally get home and you do something, right? You get home, you make tea, you get home, you, I don't know, if you've got a dog, you walk the dog. If you've got, like, maybe people are into, you watch the sport, you watch the, I remember literally I got, like, I'd get home that week.

9:41I just did nothing, nothing at all. Like, sat, like, on my bed, on the sofa, kind of staring into space, kind of working, whirring through stuff. every now and again I'd write a few things down God knows what those things said but I'd write a few things down I'd replay conversations, I'd replay things that might have said and done didn't sit on my phone, I didn't look at anything I didn't watch anything, I didn't I did nothing, I think I barely ate I think I I sat and I just existed. The worst moments in our lives can also be our biggest growth opportunities. I firmly believe that, having lived it myself.

10:38Dave realised if he carried on with this path, he'd end up alone. He did a self-audit, which was the first step to fixing himself. the first thing i did was accept it admit where i was um admit some of those things that i didn't like about myself and i still a lot of thinking about what is it really what is it that really i really care about what are the things that are really important to me what what would i want people to think of me what would i want people to say about me with you know if if if the worst happened etc i just did a lot of thinking and what do i want our life and the answers were wildly different to what i had previously considered so you know i'd always made a big thing and everyone everyone who knew me said this was i told them this a hundred times like i told everyone i was going to retire at 40 that i told everyone i just was like that's what i'm going to do and not not that's what i want to do this is what i'm going to do dave today is 41 and loving his work.

11:46He has no intention of retiring. He realised his goals, or what he told people were his goals, effectively his whole character, were at odds with what he actually wanted. It was all an act. Dave today wants to build a great VC firm. He wants to be a good husband, a good mate, a good person. He's lost the expensive watch. He met a woman in Las Vegas who is the best person he's ever met, and they're now married. And he says she doesn't care about material things. His wedding ring was£15 off Amazon. After this week of reflection, he transformed himself, which is amazing. Obviously credit to him. But what's it like suddenly changing your personality?

12:27What was it like for the people around him? Did he tell them he was a changed man? I didn't tell people. I didn't go out and say, by the way, everyone, I'm kind of aware that you think I'm an obet, but I'm not going to be an obet anymore. um i just started being truthful to who i was and i thought a lot about the way i acted i thought a lot about the way i behaved and i read a shit ton of books about you know things that are um about like you know sort of from human psychology through to um you know the benefits of of helping your team become happy and enjoying what they do. And I took leadership very, very seriously.

13:14And I sort of thought about all those things and all those subtle cues that you have as a leader. And, you know, I read an amazing book called Give and Take by Adam Grant, which I think is one of those books that you read and just change your mindset on stuff. and I realized kind of pretty clearly and pretty brutally that the book talks about givers, takers, and matchers. Givers being people who go out of their way to help other people and there's a lot of evidence to suggest that people who help a lot of other people without expecting reward get disproportionately rewarded in the long run. Matchers are people who say, well, if I give you something, I want something in return And then takers are people who just are constantly looking to just take what they can out of any particular situation Dave decided to become a giver He ruthlessly went through his life, removed fellow takers and surrounded himself with good people Givers like his wife He found himself drawn to people who were successful but humble Bright but with integrity and low-key He says that finding mentors is a cheat code for life because they role model how to be a better, happier person right in front of you.

14:36It's clear that Dave is a much happier, more secure person today. He actually thinks his previous bravado was born out of a lack of confidence underneath it all rather than a surplus. Now he can just get on with being himself, which points to the big lesson from this conversation. I think the advice I would have is, if something is important to you and you've made mistakes in the past and that you've not necessarily reflected those values or whatever it might be or you've failed in a certain thing, right? Everyone has the ability to rewrite their own script, right? To say this isn't what I'm going to be.

15:21This isn't the way I'm going to do things. or that failure isn't going to be something that I'm going to repeat. That life, that version of events isn't going to be something that I'm going to do again. And you have the ability and all you need to do is think about it and be honest with yourself and then practice. Like if you take my example, you can't just decide to not be a knob, tell people you're not a knob and then that's it, right? You just have to just not be a knob. consistently over a period of time. And I think the bit that

16:04people who might be going through stuff themselves is that that is in your gift. That is, you can change that version of events. And if you want to do something, you absolutely can.

16:23Dave Foreman, who looked in the mirror, didn't like who he saw and flipped it around. He became true to the person he really was, to the things he really holds dear. Well done, Dave. It's not easy doing what he did, and it's not easy talking about it either. So thanks to him for sharing so openly. Remember, you can always change your script because you are the one who writes it. Thanks for listening to this episode. I've been your host, Dan Murray-Surter. If you like this episode, please hit follow or subscribe. See you next time.