We just read a great article from Darren Hardy of Success Magazine – I Love the F-Word (no it’s not the F word you’re thinking about!)…the word is FAILURE. What a great example of Failing Fast for Success! Not only has Darren failed (like all of us), but he interviewed a few big-time CEOs asking them to list the top 5 defining moments responsible for their great success and of course, great failures are on their list (even on more than one spot). It seems that many of the big-time achievers we all know about and want to emulate thrive on failure…they even love it, per Darren.
Having a business often results in learning from many failures. No one likes to fail, but the key is to fail fast, fail cheap…learn and move on. Wouldn’t you want to learn fast and move on? To know early that your business isn’t going to work? To not waste time and money (we read another article about a entrepreneur who lost a million dollars over two years) banging your head against the wall?
We are not encouraging you to fail, but it’s a fundamental truth that you cannot know all the answers or predict the future of your business. We can (and should) make plans in our business but all the planning in the world won’t guarantee a failure or two. And even if planning were a guarantee to success would your growth be stunted due to not experiencing failure. That seems to be the case that Darren and his group of CEO’s are making.
Success is a direct result of learning from challenges and failures.
Sara Blakely (world’s youngest self-made female billionaire and founder of Spanx) stated that her dad would ask her “what did you fail at today?” and if there weren’t any failures her dad would be disappointed due to lack of trying hard enough. That’s a paradigm shift!
Too many people wait until their program, product, service, etc is perfect before going to market. Don’t wait! Test, promote, sell what you’ve got and improve as you go. To wait for perfection only results in lost opportunities.
We teach our children to learn from their mistakes, why can’t we? Don’t let your ego get in the way of you failing to success. Failure builds character, teaches us humility, shows us how to cope with adversity, and challenges us to continually test, revise and improve.
We need to be obsessed with improvement in our business to experience success through failure.
Remember, even if you’re falling flat on your face, at least you’re still moving forward.
Having said all that, we’re not suggesting that you throw caution to the wind or ignore preparation but embrace the idea of SUCCESS Loves Speed and don’t be afraid to fail. It may be one of the most important things you can (should) do.
Famous Failure Quotes…
- “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
~Henry Ford, Ford Motor Company - “It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No-one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you. All that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.”
~Mark Cuban, Shark Tank - “The key to success is massive failure. Your goal is to out-fail your competition. Whoever can fail the most, the fastest and the biggest, wins.”
~Thomas Watson, IBM President - “Failure is not my friend. I don’t like failure. I LOVE it. And you should, too.”
~Darren Hardy, Success Magazine
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==> Give Charles & Linda of Musselwhite Consulting a call if you have questions at (951) 291-1774, or email at contact@MusselwhiteMarketing.com…we look forward to chatting with you!
