Failure

by Jason St.Clair

I wanted to just briefly touch on failure. Not only failure professionally but also personally.

We all know what failure is and I’m sure more than the fair share of you have experienced failure numerous times. I also understand why almost all of the people in the world want to avoid failure as much as possible. We almost avoid failure like the plague. Failure in so many words just stinks. It hurts, sometimes it hurts really bad. Especially if it is something that we invested so much time and effort into.

Naturally, our mind and souls want to avoid that pain as much as possible, therefore, as we get older, we begin to start and avoid failure more and more often. We almost become professionals at this. Recognizing a risk and a potential failure and avoiding it quite adeptly. However, I’m going to let you know, that failure is absolutely necessary for growth.

Say, for instance, you spent a great amount of time and effort into creating a one-person marketing campaign. You identified what you think would be the perfect target market. You outline your script, you wear your perfect outfit and you go out and meet those potential clients. You spent a bunch of time and effort doing this. In return, you get absolutely no clients. Not even a whimper of someone interested. It would be easy to turn tail and run at this point. Completely giving up that strategy that failed. However, I would urge you to take as many notes as possible as to why you failed. Even go as far as to talk to the people you marketed to and asked why. Try and take the emotion out of the equation.

The truth hurts, but in this case, it’s going to help you sharpen your strategy into something that works. After gathering those notes, make those changes and try again. Take notes on the successes you have also. Regroup and try again. Hone that skill.

In short, embrace your failures and learn from them. Especially if you’re a one-person operation. Trust in yourself, get better.

Thanks,

-Jason