Fail big
David Donde is a bit rough around the edges – it’s part of his charm. He reveals, “I’ve got a lot of scars and that’s from my hidden talent which is falling off bicycles a lot.”
But it’s what you do after falling down that matters, and David has learned – from experience – the perfect response: “You’ve got to pick yourself up off the floor. It’s the only thing to do.”
David recalls one of those lessons: “I think the real moment of starting Truth Coffee was when I realised that my previous roastery was no longer mine and I needed to start again.”
True to form, David found his way back to his feet. “I was down to my last dollar in my pocket and I needed to get going and the phone rang and said, ‘I’ll fund you.’”
In fact, if one word could describe David, it would be ‘bouncebackability’. When we asked him about the advice he lives his life by, he responded, “I think the big pieces of advice are to fail big. To really fail doing great stuff, not fail doing mediocrity.”
Nobody could accuse Truth Coffee of mediocrity. David says the purpose of his business is “to bring the joy of the extraordinary to people.” That’s big.