Appearing on CBS taught me a tough lesson

It wasn't the takeaway I wanted, but it was the one I needed

May 17, 2022

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In January of 2022, my startup, Paintru, was featured on national news by CBS. We set out to do something kind with our business for people that we cared about - we teamed up with a non-profit to gift paintings of fallen military service members to their families. The night the news segment aired, I wept hard for the first time since my father had passed three years before.

Launching the initiative, coordinating the production of the paintings, learning the stories of these heroes and their sacrifice, then sharing the grief and anguish that the families experienced had rendered me emotionally exhausted.

Truthfully though, I was crying only partly because of the emotional rollercoaster of the campaign. Instead, my sorrow originated from selfish, unrealistic expectations of what the CBS piece would do for our business.

Here’s some quick background on the campaign -

Background - our initiative to paint fallen heroes

I started Paintru alongside a team of incredible military veterans and graduates of the US Naval Academy - the premier US military academy (West Point and the Air Force Academy are great but decidedly lesser schools). Over our two years running the business, we had struggled on two fronts -

Marketing - To convince people that a hand-painted version of a photo is more emotionally evocative than a framed photograph and that as a premium product, our painting deserves a premium price point
Purpose - To incorporate authentic pieces of ourselves in our product

Over the summer of 2021, I received a phone call from the President of a non-profit called Steel Hearts, John Crowley. John is a wonderful human being, despite his West Point origins, and we formed an instant bond as we hatched a bold idea.

Together, we would pay tribute to every fallen service academy graduate killed during the last two decades of war by commissioning a portrait of each of them. The Paintru team would coordinate the production of the paintings with our network of artists, while the Steel Hearts team would coordinate with the bereaved families. We would fundraise to cover the costs of producing the portraits as a united team.

Although we wouldn’t turn a profit on these paintings, the campaign would be an obvious win for us as a business. We would

Provide more work for our artists
Benefit from the goodwill we engendered
Give a beautiful gift to a community deserving of attention and love.

Moreover, I hoped this campaign would show potential customers how emotionally moving our work can be. We would tell the stories of fallen heroes and our business simultaneously.

We launched the campaign publically on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Shortly after launch, I was contacted by a reporter from CBS asking if she could tell our story on national news. In December 2021, I met a crew from CBS in Scottsdale, Arizona, to film our artist, Paige Pfluegler’s workshop and our gift to Sherry and Nick Fresques.

After filming, CBS told us that our segment would air adjacent to 60-minutes on CBS.

60-minutes is the most-watched cable news program in the country - six to seven million people tune in to watch the hour-long show every Sunday. Our segment would air between a Sunday NFL game and the most popular news segment in the country.

My Expectations

We had experienced mixed success with the business over the preceding two years - growth had been slow, but we believed in our product and team.

We had committed about 10% of our limited capital towards paying a professional PR agency to help us land media attention. Unfortunately, the results of that agency’s work were non-existent - we would have been better off lighting that cash on fire because there was a chance that stunt would have landed us some press attention.

This CBS piece was our chance, though!

We were going to authentically tell our story on national news to a massive audience! I had high expectations for this news segment. With six million viewers, I expected -

Site views - 0.5% of those viewers would visit our website - 30k people.
Immediate purchases - 0.5% of those visitors would purchase a painting, about 150 people.
Revenue - With an average order value of $450, that equates to over $60k of revenue.
Donations - We linked to the fundraiser at the top of our site, and I expected over $100k of assistance to help fuel this campaign and propel our mission to paint these fallen heroes forward.

With these lofty expectations, I sat down prepared for a life-changing evening.

I was nervous to see the clip as we had not seen it before airing, and I wondered how our small team would handle all of the inbound attention we would receive on our chat widget and by phone. Thirty thousand visitors would quickly overwhelm our team of 5, but we prepared to the best of our ability, and we were excited to see how the evening played out.

After an eternity, the NFL games ended, and the news segment began.

The cold, hard reality

The news segment was beautiful.

It showed the incredible talent of our artist, Paige, and gave Nick and Sherry a platform to tell Jeremy’s story. The fact that we were discussing Jeremy decades after his sacrifice meant the world to them, and their strength and resilience were inspiring to watch. I will stand in awe of their strength and courage for the rest of my life.

The word Paintru was only mentioned one time during the clip, however. So while I felt relieved that the clip had come out so well, I was nervous about how people would find us with our name and logo cut so dramatically.

I waited for the phone to ring and to be overwhelmed by inbound chats from potential customers.

As I waited, I slowly realized that the clip's effects would be dramatically lower than my expectations.

In total, that night, we received -

Site views - 439-page visits (vs. 30k I had expected)
Revenue - 0 purchases resulting in $0 of revenue (vs. $60k I expected)
Donations - $0 donated to the campaign (vs. $100k I expected)

I was crushed.

This clip felt like a final shot on goal for our struggling startup - an opportunity to notch a win after years of challenge. Every startup story I have ever heard contains some turning point - a moment of overcoming adversity that launches the business to the next level and phase of growth.

This clip was supposed to be our turning point. Instead, I sat on the couch and wept.

A harsh lesson - perception is a product of expectations

Our expectations dominate our perception of the world.

When we have low expectations for our future and exceed those goals, we feel great about our achievement. Conversely, when we set lofty goals and fail to achieve them, we are disappointed and disgruntled. Our expectations for how a scenario will unfold dramatically affect our perception and enjoyment.

When CBS aired our news clip, my initial reaction was to weep on the couch as the outcome differed dramatically from what I was hoping would occur. In retrospect, I feel like a selfish fool.

Fundamentally, the only changes between the moments before the segment airing and the moments following were:

We had a great piece of media content that highlighted the positive work we were doing.
The Fresques family had a chance to tell a captive audience their son’s story.
A hard-working and incredibly talented artist showcased her skills on national TV.

When I look at what we did for the Fresques family, Paige, and ourselves, I’m incredibly proud of that outcome. It seems so obvious in hindsight, but I had to learn the hard lesson of how our expectations influence our perception.

Conclusion - set lower expectations, and focus on what matters

The two main takeaways I had from that night were:

It’s better to set lower expectations. If you outperform those expectations, you’ll be happy, and if you underperform, you’ll be less miserable.
Focus on what matters.

If I had focused on the impact of our work rather than the performance of the business, I would have wept with joy. Below is an excerpt we recently received from a father of a fallen service member. His words leave me speechless, so I will conclude this post here and leave you with them. Thank you for taking the time to read - I look forward to hearing your thoughts.