Nicole Parmar had the honour and privilege of speaking in front of a packed house in West Minster. She shared her life’s trials and tribulations and funny little anecdotes for getting by!
You can follow along here:
https://www.pechakucha.com/presentations/failures-and-f-star-ck-ups
Or Read About It Here
All right. Today I’m here to talk to you about how two arrests for university degrees a baby, a startup and a misappropriation of funds turned into life’s greatest moments. We’re going to revisit that statement at the end, and we’re going to talk about how some of our fuck ups I swear a lot just by how some of our fuck ups turned into our life’s greatest blessings many moons ago, I was a poor university student, and I was doing what university students do. I was drinking at some sports teams house I had consumed one, potentially to Miller high life.
So I mean, they are the champagne of beer, and I realized at that moment I had to get my drunk ass home. So I decided I would walk. I stuffed my bunny hug full of my Miller High Life. That was remaining, and I decided to attempt on my journey homeward bound. Well, really. Soon I would realize that heals ice inebriation and a really tore a really poor choice of footwear that night would lead to my first arrests. Yes, I am sad to stand here in front of you today and tell you that I was arrested and became at a degenerate on the day. However, I’m a problem solver. I decided to put on a growth mindset and I decided that I would take my sister’s Id. Unbeknownst to her.
Anyways, I took this id. I thought that that would be the solution to life’s current problems. I was wrong. Turns out that that very idea is the reason I would go to jail for the second time. Okay. Turns out I wasn’t making better decisions. It wasn’t progressing in life. That was just stupidity repeating itself. No problem. I soon realized that I was the black sheep of my family.
However, right after that, I also realized I was their pride and joy because while I managed to get my ass s in jail twice, I also managed to rack up four university degrees. Yeah, not too bad. So while I was feeling some of my lowest lows, I also started to feel some of my highest highs.
I left the United States after graduating in my seedy little passed in the back and they moved to land. You all know you all love Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Thriving metropolis. Yeah, I met and married the man of my dreams. We started moving to Toronto, San Francisco, Manhattan. We had to start up. It was thriving. I didn’t know how life could possibly get any better for us. It did.
We found out we were expecting We found it. We were expecting. And again I found myself contemplating how on earth my life could possibly get any better. And you guys, it fucking didn’t!!
All right, so there we were. We have this baby, we’re living in Vancouver. We found out my brother in law, Lord Voldermort, the CFO of the company, had been misappropriating funds. Our start up with seven days from declaring bankruptcy. Then our only saving grace was that we didn’t live in Canada’s most expensive city in the world.
You know, we live in Vancouver, So there we were, really living the dream. We had no money, we had a baby and we were living in Vancouver. Luckily for me, I was on Matt Leaf. I decided to start working everyday. So did my husband. However, while I was working everyday, I also got to take care of our little baby. Or I took care of the baby and worked in between. I don’t know either way. I realized soon that I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t sleeping. I mean, who had time for that shit? And soon I realized I was in a funk.
Depression hit. I knew I should be happy. I know. I should get under the bed. I just couldn’t. Nothing was going right. So what do you do when you’re depressed? I asked for help, and slowly but surely everything started getting better. I decided to build my own business because I had learned a lot of lessons in the past.
I had learned what happens when you work with untraceable people. Maybe not the best people. I have learned that when you’re building a business, you need systems. You need processes. You need fail safe someplace so you don’t wind up seven days from bankruptcy. And I’m proud to stand here today and tell you that because of those lessons learned, we built not one but two very successful cos they’re both thriving today.
Now, as for that startup that start up, that was within seven days of bankruptcy, Well, we put our heads down as a team. We had to do a lot more with a lot less. We tried really hard. We got a true north. And I’m also proud to tell you that because of our I guess, pure grit in life. We were able to sell that company to Eventbrite in 2018 which now loops us back to our highest high.
If you’ve been following along this journey and I hope I haven’t lost you in the last 5 – 6 minutes here, I hope what you’re realizing is that in life there’s going to be a lot of highs and a lot of lows. And what I’ve learned in life is that my biggest failures are actually more important to me than my successes. Because if all day everyday life was just successful, if you just woke up and you had start and success, all that would happen all day is everything is awesome. But it’s not.
You need those failures in life because what those failures do is they teach you. They give you a swift kick in the ass and they tell you to get your ass back on the path of righteousness. As long as you’re willing to stand up and laugh at yourself. and clearly I have no shame. So it’s super easy. And I’d like to tell you that just because you have some failures just because you have some fuck ups that shouldn’t end you when you have those failures in life Get up, Turn it around. Everything will be awesome.
And for me Well, if you’ve ever had a moment in life for you’ve experienced your highest high or your lowest low I would love to hear about it today. I would be there live to celebrate with you or commiserates with you over some wine. Thanks.
Good luck.