Out of the woods
Bill Murphy was flying like an eagle in the 1990s. The chartered accountant had a marriage, friends, family and was succeeding in the business adventure of a lifetime: Ledgers. The Cape Bretoner launched the one-stop business advice, service and support centre in 1994, when he was 33. It had grown rapidly, and the future was shade-wearingly bright.
“It’s like a freight train. We’re growing that fast,” he boasted back in 2000. “We refuse to be second player. We want to be the number one service provider to small business globally. That’s our mission.”
But his high-octane optimism ran dry when the venture seized up. Cash stopped flowing in, and “friends” and investors started flowing out. Murphy’s mother had died in 1999. His marriage fell apart around the same time. By 2001, the business had failed. Ledgers lives on today as an international book-keeping company, but for Murphy, the dream was dead.
“I had backed everything. I had guaranteed everything and exposed myself completely, all based on this fanatical belief that this is just going to work,” he said in a recent interview with Progress. “It was a horrible feeling and just talking about it today, I can feel in my stomach the way that felt. You never lose that feeling. It’s with me all the time.”
In the ashes of his dreams, Murphy did what any chartered accountant would do: he wrote a 90,000-word allegorical novel called A Forest Tale. It follows Bill the Eagle as his exciting new business venture, the Forest-wide Web, takes wing. While Bill Murphy only speaks in general terms about his own disillusionment, he opens up about the inner workings of Bill the Eagle.
“It’s the story of a dreamer and how it goes wrong, mentally. The venture capitalists are squirrels – they hoard nuts. Bankers are weasels, lawyers are snakes, government employees are chickens. I had a lot of fun with it,” he said, grinning. “It was always to tell the story of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur and what it’s like to fail.”
Bill is enthralled by Mr. Big, the horse who runs a Wal-Mart-style farm in the Eastern Forest.
“Bill wants to be that. He gets caught up in the people, the players, and he wants to be part of that scene. Everyone’s telling him how wonderful he is and all that, but he doesn’t know what to do,” he said.
Bill loses his family and thinks the Forest-Wide Web board can replace them. “He thinks, ‘They’ll help.’ No they won’t. They’re not your family: they’re there for a reason, to carry out whatever they want to get out of it,” Murphy said.
Bill’s business fails and he’s left all alone. At his lowest point, he turns to Thomas the Grizzly Bear, a simple potato farmer Bill once mocked for his low aspirations.
“Thomas shows him what’s really important in life, and Bill gets that. At the end of the book, Thomas says, ‘You know, Bill, I think we can make this the best, biggest potato farm in the eastern forest.’ And Bill goes, ‘Nah, let’s just grow a few potatoes. Let’s not dream too big,’” Murphy said, laughing.
The book “tells you what it’s like when the cash is running out, that feeling of being alone, because no one is there to say, ‘That’s okay, here’s more money to keep it going.’ They don’t say that; they say, ‘What? How can you be out of money!’”
After Ledgers failed, Bill the Man left town. Sydney didn’t take the “Silicon Valley view” of failure as learning opportunity, he said. Murphy faded from public life. Google him today, and you’ll find only shadows. That’s deliberate.
“Going through what I went through was a very traumatic process. It was very tough. I really just wanted to stay in the background,” he said. “I never wanted to put myself out there like that, because it was so devastating.”
Today, Murphy is launching his latest venture, Our Town Earth, and his belief in the project has drawn him back into a lead role. The web community for people with disabilities started four years ago, when Murphy met Dan MacNeil. MacNeil wanted to create a resource on Cape Breton’s Christmas Island employing people with disabilities. Murphy saw why it wouldn’t work. He also saw what could work as he became immersed in the world of disability.
With customized profiles, Our Town Earth “residents” navigate through neighbourhoods of homes, buildings and parks, uncovering expansive resources and services including entertainment, education and entrepreneurship while communicating with like-minded individuals.
“It opens up empowerment tools for persons with disabilities that they can deploy in the real world,” Murphy said. “It’s not just some virtual world.”
OTE’s beta target is 2,000 “residents,” but it wants millions of users in the long term.
“It’s exciting and nerve-wracking,” Murphy said. “The tough thing about the project is balancing the fiscal and the social. If Our Town Earth is all about a company and making money … it won’t work. If it’s all about forwarding a social agenda, it won’t work. What you have to do is constantly balance.”
Murphy, who also co-wrote a published young adult fantasy book called Wax Wishes and is involved in several other businesses, has found that balance in his own life. At 48, he’s entering the ninth year of his marriage to Donna, a social worker. He has two children from his first marriage and two step-children with Donna. She joined him in the rubble of his dreams and helped him rebuild. In fact, Murphy compares starting a business to falling in love.
“Well at first, woo! Isn’t it wonderful? But if you honestly believe that that feeling of wonderful and in love is going to carry your relationship over a 25-year span, you’re crazy. It’s not: it takes work. Everything takes work,” he said. “You can be passionate about it and excited about it, but you can’t be lost in a dream.”
One of the lessons he learned from Ledgers was to beware the “killer” entrepreneurial gene that says your venture is going to work, no matter what.
“That’s not true. I had that, and I’ll never forget the day when it hit me, ‘This could fail,” he said. “You find out who your friends are and who you’ve alienated because you’ve become egotistical. If I die tomorrow with $50 million in the bank, well, so what? But if I’ve impacted someone’s life in a good way, I can die a happy guy.”