{Personal Image}
Failure. That’s a loaded word. One that provokes fear, nausea, and tears.
It’s something that can be so terrifying that we don’t give it any room—forgetting to take the positive out of it. Yep, I’m saying that the words positive and failure can go together.
I’m also saying that if you don’t allow any room for failure, you’re probably going to fail. Let me try to make sense out of this statement.
When you’re terrified of failing, you play it way too safe.
You’re vanilla when you really want to be cake batter ice-cream with Oreo crumbles, hot fudge, and pink sprinkles. Instead of making it clear that your product is the perfect fit for the mom with a toddler who doesn’t have any time for herself, you try to sell it to all moms—even the ones with two nannies per kid. You dilute your product descriptions and marketing materials so much that all the struggling moms with toddlers overlook it, and you wonder why you’re not selling anything.
Instead of selling the gluten-free cupcakes that you’ve perfected over the past five years and would be a huge hit with anyone who’s allergic to gluten, you make and sell regular cupcakes because you’re afraid of limiting yourself. You get decent reviews, but you’re not known for anything. And, you don’t stand out.
I’ve talked to too many creative entrepreneurs who’ve said, “I can’t fail. It’s not an option.”
Then when I ask why they aren’t getting more specific with their branding, they say they’re scared. When I ask why they haven’t gotten rid of the jewelry line that they hate making, they say that it sells sometimes and they’re scared. When I ask why they haven’t started the blog they’ve been talking about for weeks, they say that they aren’t launching it until it’s perfect. They’re scared.
I get it. I “can’t” fail either. I need to make money to pay bills, especially those student loans I racked up in grad school. I don’t want to fail. I don’t want to say, “Hey. Remember me? The idiot who left a stable job with benefits as a therapist and started an online business that failed?” But, I also know that failing doesn’t mean I’m done. I can learn and grow. That’s what it’s all about.
If you look at failure as something that can make you even better, you might not be so terrified of it.
If I launch a new program and it fails, that’ll suck. I’ll probably have a few moments where I feel like crap and want to crawl under my covers. I might even give myself a day to be sad, watch girly movies featuring Ashton Kutcher, and eat vegan and gluten-free English muffins. {I know—English muffins sound like a weird “comfort” food but they’re so delicious when they’re one of the only “carbs” you get to eat.} Then, I’ll try to learn everything I can from that failure. I’ll study what went wrong and try like hell not to make the same mistakes the next time.
Warning: personal story time.
I begged my mom to let me become a cheerleader in second grade. I was a girly-girl {and still am} and loved the idea of wearing pleated skirts and tightly curled hair high on my head in a ponytail. I also wanted pompoms like you wouldn’t believe. I loved it. I couldn’t wait for practices to learn new dances and routines and I counted down the days to summer camp where we actually got to learn from the super cool college cheerleaders.
Cheerleading became a huge part of my “free time.” I cheered year round, and I couldn’t imagine not being a cheerleader. I know this might sound sick to some of you, but it’s the truth. Then came middle school. I tried out for my middle school’s cheerleading team in sixth and seventh grade and I didn’t make it. Both years, I was devastated. And, I mean devastated—days of sobbing and feeling like a loser.
Instead of accepting defeat, I joined competitive cheerleading teams and kept up with it. When I started eighth grade, I got serious about figuring out why I wasn’t making the school team. I knew that I wanted to make my high school’s team, and I understood it would be even harder to make that team. I started practicing in my backyard every day. My mom pulled together all of our extra money and I signed up for private gymnastics lessons where I started to learn how to tumble. We found a college cheerleader who was willing to work with me once a week. I practiced tumbling and jumps and pushed myself to learn new routines regularly.
The summer before high school started, try outs were held. I made the team.
I’m not sharing this for some feel good story. I’m sharing it, because I wanted to give you an example of how I’ve taken crushing failure and made myself better. Anybody can do it.
Sometimes, we don’t take these opportunities to get better. We think that’s it—but it’s only the end if you let it be the end.
Story time over. But, I’m not done.
If you launch a product line and it flops, don’t give up. Talk to your target market. Get their feedback. Is this a product that they would actually buy? If so, why aren’t they buying it? If not, launch or promote a different product that they would actually buy or sell it to a different market. Learn and make changes.
If you send out an email newsletter and you don’t get any response, do your best to figure out what happened. Was it a crappy headline? Was it about something your list isn’t interested in? Was it impersonal or too salesy? Take the failure and send out a better email newsletter the next week.
Make some room for failure, so that you can be a success.
I want to leave you with this quote from Carol S. Dweck who wrote in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success: “We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary. Why not? To me that is so much more amazing.”
GREAT POST!! I really needed to read this!
I’m so glad it was helpful!
Whenever things in life don’t turn out my way, I like to think of them as “learning lessons”. The next time a similar situation comes around, I have more knowledge to make a more informed choice. Sometimes the word “failure” is just too scary & thinking in terms of “learning lessons” keeps me moving forward instead of giving up!
I love the idea of “learning lessons” Carolyn! Thanks for sharing!
Great post, April! This one really hit home for me.
Thanks Jillian! Glad you connected with it.
Great post! I really like the last quote. Sometimes we look to those people at the top and we get caught up in how fascinating and untouchable they are and we forget to stop and do a reality check and realize that they weren’t born that way. So it can be done :), we can make ourselves or our biz as amazing and super successful just as any successful person or biz out there.
P.S. A tip from one vegan to another: eating tons of sweet juicy fruit helps me to stay carbed up. Check out www. 30bananasaday.com. I’m with this awesome online community of low fat raw vegans and it helps me to stay vegan and do it the healthy way 🙂
Thanks for the tip Tabassum! I’ll check it out–but I’m not giving up my English muffins. 🙂
I’m much more of a veggie lover than a fruit lover. I make green juice every morning and usually eat veggies at every meal, so I definitely eat pretty healthy.
If I had access to vegan English muffins, I probably wouldn’t give them up either 😉 Oh in my comment, I was referring to myself ( as not getting the vegan thing down at first). Take care 🙂
Oh man! I wish you had access them–they’re pretty darn good 🙂
I have so much respect for people who keep raw diets. I’m definitely not even close to there, yet. I do eat a lot of raw stuff, especially salads. But, I like my cooked food, too! It’s hard to change your entire diet!
I heart you April! Thanks for being inspiring!!
(the book I won from you came and I’ve been reading it – it’s great! My favorite part so far was the label on the package, though. Thanks for calling me “the fabulous jenny hoople” That was a great feeling! I’m going to send it to a friend who’s going through a difficult life passage when I’m done, I think it will help her.)
((also, I got my own self-hosted ecommerce site up and running this weekend. thanks for the kick in the pants when you featured that other jewelry seller who set up her own self-hosted wordpress site. I thought my head was going to either explode or turn into mush last week while I was working on it, but I shouldered through and got it done!))
later alligator
Viva la revolucion!!
I heart you, too! And, you’re welcome!
I’m so glad that you’re enjoying the book and I love that you’re passing it on to a friend afterwards–I love doing that with my books, too.
SUPER HUGE CONGRATS on getting your ecommerce site up and running! That’s a huge step and I can understand how your brain felt like it was turning into mush. I feel the same way when I’m dealing with a bunch of technical stuff. Yay for pushing through and getting stuff done. Congrats again–I’m on your site right now and enjoying it.
Awesome post – thanks for sharing! I also loved your lead-in on the email, it got me to click to your blog! 🙂 Smiles, Heather
Thanks Heather! Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
GREAT POST! Thank you so much, that is advice I could really follow. Failure can be sooooo terrifying! It is much easier said than done but I do feel the times I have taken certain risks to narrow my market it has paid off. Thanks again!
Thanks for sharing Syrah!
Hi April – your point about being specific about what you’re selling is really valuable, and not done well by many businesses.
I’m a marketing consultant and when I work with smaller businesses in particular, they’re really reluctant to narrowly define their target market and go hard for that market – because they’re worried they’ll “miss out” on sales. But there’s a lot of room to be niche if you’re really good/expert at that niche. It also means in the time of online selling, you’re more likely to be ‘found’ in search, which is really what selling online relies on for growth.
And with google moving away from things like page rank and towards things like authorship and expertise, it will become even more important…
Hey Kimberly! Thanks for stopping by and sharing.
Narrowing one’s market usually ends up being one those battles: you know you should probably do it but you’re terrified that you’ll lose sales. But, all of the points that you made should help people move in that direction.
Hi April! You know I’ve made a lot of mistakes during my long creative life and I’ve had some serious failures! If a person gives up, she will never know the success that follows a failure. After so many of these failures and successes a person eventually becomes very self confident and very much a risk taker! Thanks for the post. I heart you! xo YMIL
Hi April,
I loved this post, and yes the lead in line on your email got me to click on your blog too! I recently spent heaps of money (well heaps for me) on developing and purchasing all the materials to create a line of cushions to sell and I tell you what I loved those cushions, I thought they were fab! I even got my friend to give me some space in her shop to try to sell them…so off they went to the shop and me all super excited waiting to sell out of them…I didnt sell a single one, it was crushing… but you know what I did what you said I went back and talked to people about the cushions and found out why no one loved them as much as me. Lesson learned- research before investment!! I have since turned it around and re-used all the cushion materials in a new line that has been selling really well.
Thanks for your post its good to know I’m not the only one that makes mistakes!!
Cheers, Emmaline
Hi April,
I got curious enough to click on your email because of the title…and, I’m throwing a jewelry party this Saturday, my first one in a very long time.
Business has not been great, not because I am not aware of my target customer. I am, really. The problem is while I was burned-out and depressed from the corporate job I just left I started to listen to friends and family and their ideas and suppositions and working with clients who promised one thing and then did another. (That lead to another burnout, by the way.)
Designing and creating jewelry, which I had loved, became a chore and I procrastinated. I cannot say I loved what I was creating. Don’t get me wrong – the jewelry looks good. But I don’t feel like I incorporated myself into the work like I did when I was in love with it.
Lesson learned: 1) Stop letting other people design my jewelry (they can keep their comments to themselves), 2) Develop my standards and boundaries ahead of time so I can defend them, 3) Choose the boutiques that fit in with what I do instead of letting them choose me (unless they are experienced, and still check them out before I make a decision). Basically, I have to be more pro-active.
And, 4) Stop letting people help me to fail. I can fail all by myself! 😀
Thanks for the article!
But I don’t feel like I incorporated myself into the work like I did when I was in love with it. I’m so glad that you’re enjoying the book and I love that you’re passing it on to a friend afterwards–I love doing that with my books, too.