According to Mark Jacobsen, he had been steeped in books about failing fast, failing forward, resilience, grit, and moonshots as a startup founder. But what happens to the founder when that world comes crashing down on the hopes and dreams who started that journey? While there are numerous books about epic business collapses, few exist on dealing with personal failure where Mark shares his inner battles in his book, Eating Glass.
This book is a dive headlong into catastrophic failure, in my case, a startup failure, but not about the business side of it. It’s really about what it was like for me going through that — and through a recovery and healing process that that took years. I wrote it precisely because nobody writes about this.
Mark Jacobsen – Eating Glass
Who is Mark Jacobsen?
- Startup founder
- U.S. Air Force strategist
- Former Air Force cargo pilot
- Masters Degree from the University of Jordan in Conflict Resolution
- Earned PhD in Political Science at Stanford
- Novelist
- Professor of Strategy and Security Studies at the Air Force School of Advanced Space Studies
To learn more, see Mark’s About Page on his website.
Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.
Elon Musk
Interview Topics
- The intended audience for Eating Glass
- The failure that Mark endured over two years.
- A definition of failure.
- Failure, mental health issues, or depression … which comes first?
- Pressfield on resistance.
- Is grit enough?
- Do perfectionists have it harder?
- Hurting and healing.
- The John Rossi story.
- How do we work through aftershocks?
- The role of friends and family.
- Old script vs new script
- Mark’s failure discussion for teens.
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