Jonathan Torrens Says Being Booed By 75,000 People Is ‘Almost Sexual’

HALIFAX – “It’s almost sexual when you’re booed by 75,000 people. Something weird happens where you almost want to rip your shirt off and just marinate in the ill will directed towards you.”

That was Jonathan Torrens’ take on one of his biggest professional fuckups, and it earned roars of laughter from the crowd at The Red Stag Tavern last week.

Torrens, best known for portraying J-Roc on the hit TV show Trailer Park Boys, shared the story as part of Fuckup Nights Halifax.

The event, part of the global Fuckup Nights movement, brought three entrepreneurs together to tell the stories behind their biggest failures.

With drinks flowing and a comedy-club vibe, the goal for the night was to be both a cathartic release for a community where reputation is crucial and an opportunity to learn from people who have recovered from their own massive mistakes.

And while bombing in front of huge crowds and bluffing your way through pitch meetings can spawn considerable comic fodder, Wednesday night’s speakers also dished out heaps of hard-earned wisdom.

Gregg Curwin, the founder and former president of TruLeaf Sustainable Agriculture, told the crowd about starting an ill-advised venture that “flamed out” after a couple of years and sent him into bankruptcy.

“It hurt and I was afraid to go outside I was afraid to go downtown and I didn’t want to show my face,” he recalled.

But it was also the best thing that could have happened for his career.

“I had thought everything I touched turned to gold,” he said, and his humbling gave him some much-needed perspective.

Jordan Kyriakidis, the co-founder of Halifax’s QRA Corp, recalled leaving his job as a theoretical physics professor to start the company.

“I was comically over-confident with how easy it would be,” he said. “My attitude going in was like, look man I’m a prof, I’ve added to the body of knowledge, how hard can starting a company be?”

He learned exactly how hard it was, he said, after accepting a major contract from Lockheed Martin that he wasn’t in any kind of position to deliver on.

He remembered looking around his office, after floundering through the contract for a while, wondering if he was going to be able to pay his employees.

“It was crushing because if you screw up you have to pay the price, but also that person there has to pay the price, who you convinced to come work for you, and they actually believed you, and they have a kid, and they have a mortgage, and now you think to yourself I can’t fuck up or I’m going to ruin this kid’s life. And you look behind you and there’s a whole ocean of screw-ups strewn behind you, and you think holy shit what have I done?”

QRA made it through the contract and the company is still around today. Kyriakidis told the crowd that the only thing that made that possible was learning from his mistakes and sticking to his core values of tenacity, authenticity, and openness.

Curwin had a similar message.

His bankruptcy lead him to start TruLeaf, a company he said he was incredibly passionate about.

“To create something great, particularly a business or a product, it is nothing but a sequencing of fuck-ups,” he said. “But that’s the beauty of it.”

“How you fuck up and how you respond and how you address it, it’s nothing but a series of getting down and getting up and getting down and getting up and being smarter and smarter and calibrating and calibrating.”

“That really painful experience I told you about, I never would have done this if I hadn’t gone through that. It’s really the best growth experience that you can possibly get.”