Society has led us to believe that failing is a bad thing. It suggests that we are less of a person if we fail and that we have nothing going for us. Let’s consider that, actually, the opposite is true.
If we are failing, it is because we are pushing ourselves far beyond our comfort zone, and we all know that that is where true growth happens.
As a business owner, one of the best ways to find out your own “secret formula” is trial and error. You are launching new products and services, offering free webinars, providing value to your audience. Testing different marketing strategies, launching campaign ideas, social media posts, and keynote speeches.
The way to find success and grow is to learn from what we did both right AND wrong in each of these situations.
You see, if we only focus on what we do right, we will only continue to do those things. Yes, you should keep doing more of the things that work but understand that there is more than one way to skin a cat (as they say…!).
However, what if there is something else, something even better that you haven’t discovered yet?
You have to try; you have to get it wrong to be able to analyze, re-invent and try again until you have absolutely nailed it.
Failing is how we learn! Remember when you were learning to ride a bike? How many times did you fall off? How many times did you get back on and do it slightly differently until you found your balance and pedaled in a straight line for the first time?
Each time you fell, you changed what you did the next time. You worked at it until you found your own “secret formula,” and business is no different.
We can learn from the mistakes of others, but until we feel the pain and the impact that our failure has on us and our business, it does not truly resonate.
Chances are once you’ve made that mistake, you won’t be in a hurry to make it again!
Failure is a sign of growth, of determination, of wanting to be better for yourself and for your clients.
Understanding that failure is not a bad thing is the first step to success.
Let’s look at Walt Disney, for example. Disney was fired from a newspaper for lacking in ideas, having no imagination…..Disney’s market capitalization (parks, movies, merchandise etc.) is currently valued at around $150 billion (source: fool.com) and I think we can all agree; it’s pretty imaginative!
Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb after over 10,000 attempts! How did he justify the other attempts? That he had found “definitively over 9,000 ways that an electric light bulb will not work.” (Source: smallbizsense.com). Now that’s a seriously positive attitude!
Accepting that you will fail is part of the process, it is how you deal with it that makes the difference.
Sharing your failures makes you human, it makes you easy to relate to and it makes people trust you. We all know there is no such thing as perfect, that there are no “secret blueprints for success” - being open about your own processes and failures to your audiences makes you more relatable, more human and more trustworthy.
Choose to learn from your failures. Choose to grow through it and to come out the other side even stronger, even more, successful, and even more impactful.
Meet Gems-
Gems is a Business Consultant who specializes in the creation of online courses, as well as providing 1-1 business coaching to solo entrepreneurs, focus on business growth by working on mindset strategies and the implementation of additional revenue streams.
With a Masters in Global Management and a 15-year career in Project Management, Gems started her own business when she married a US serviceman and her career trajectory changed. Now, she is able to combine her love for coaching and online course creation with her expertise in Project Management, to help others grow their
