Have You Ever Felt Like An Utter Failure? Every lesson in this book has been learned the hard way. (Yes, I used to be one of those CEOs making the fatal planning mistake in the prior section.) What frustrations, challenges or failures are you facing right now, in life or work? Do you understand that from these challenges can come your biggest successes? You’ve read on the cover of this book or on my blog that my sales process helped create $100 million in recurring revenue for Salesforce.com. The seed for that success (and the whole idea of “Predictable Revenue”) was planted in an incredibly painful failure of my own. Back in 1999, I was the founder and CEO of LeaseExchange.com, a 50-person Internet company. I learned the hard way what works and doesn’t work in management and sales (basically by screwing up a lot and not asking for enough help from others). After raising $5 million in venture capital and working through it for a couple of years, we shut down the business in 2001. The dream died. Have you ever had a dream die? (I've been divorced too, which was even more painful. But don't hold your breath for a book on Predictable Love!) Have you ever been so excited about something in your life—more excited than about anything else, ever—only to have it crash and burn? It was ugly. And as a founder and leader, I felt responsible for killing the dreams of my people at the company. During the “death march” while the company died, I spent too much time alone outside of work. I became a hermit--exactly the wrong thing to do when I needed community the most. My escape during the closing of the company was drinking vodka while playing computer games on Friday nights, just to numb out and distract myself from what was going on. And yes, once the doors on the company finally closed, I at least felt a little