Who plans to fail. I do! You may think I’m crazy but I love failing. To be clear, I love succeeding far more but at this point in my career and life I have learned to really value failure. I’m always amazed at the fear of failure. It’s all around us! Here are just some examples:
- The sales person is fearful of rejection so they don’t ask for the business
- An account manager doesn’t ask for account rounds because they fear rejection
- An owner doesn’t hire a salesperson out of fear that they will succeed
- We don’t invest in a marketing strategy because we were burned once
All of this fear is completely irrational! I would pay to fail weekly! You never make the same mistakes again and it forces you to look at the process and the steps then find the point of failure to press through to success. Here is the reality, if you are trying to grow, you will fail routinely. If you aren’t failing you simply aren’t trying enough. Success is a numbers game. The billionaires of America fail more than they succeed.
So how do we get rid of the FUD, Fear Uncertainty and Doubt? You accept failure as part of your life. In my life, I obsess over my failures and critical feedback. When a failure comes by I dust off get back up and figure it out. Failures can be opportunity just in work clothes.
As business owners, lets get rid of being scared of failing. Let’s embrace it, work with it and challenge ourselves to fail forward.
