How To Change Your Perspective on Failure

As a wise man once said, "Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently." And in the world of business, if you haven't failed at least a few times, you're probably not doing it right.

As a business owner, it's easy to get wrapped up in the fear of failure and let it consume you. But what if you flipped the script and embraced it instead? On today's episode of The High Performance Marketing Podcast, learn how to change how you see failure and maybe even find ways to help it lead you to new opportunities.

Transcription:

Welcome To High Performance Marketing, a podcast where we discuss how to connect customers to great brands by leveraging content marketing as a profitable pillar to your customer acquisition strategy. I’m Chief Copywriter and Messaging Strategist, Ali Garbero.

In early 2007 I became a mom and at the time my husband and I were used to living on two incomes so when I took a step back to stay home with our new baby, our budget became rather tight. That’s when I found myself searching for creative ways to make an income. I did a lot of things.

I sold the formula they gave me at the hospital because my daughter was breast fed, I started buying BOB jogging strollers and flipping them for a profit. We lived in Orange County, and these were Guys, I’m ashamed to say I even took on a $200 writing project for a young man who needed a college essay written for him - and at the time $200 was a gold mine!

Anyway, because I was living in a new city and didn’t know a lot of people I had a lot of down time. I’m an avid reader so I spent a lot of time reading books written by Entrepreneurs (because I was trying to figure out how to be a mom and find a way to create income for my family.) Most of the books I read were ones in which these Entrepreneurs all shared their grueling stories of failure before their miraculous triumph to success.

I always loved the part where they shared the hard times. The mistakes they made, the massive amounts of money they lost, the wrong paths they took - because it just made the ending of the story so much better. I knew there was a business inside of me that I wanted to run, but I didn’t know what that thing was. So I continued to take on small projects, and used my college degree to teach a few classes at the local college, but in 2010 I did find myself in a place where my husband lost his job, so I had to go back to work. I’d spent 10 years as a corporate employee prior to having my daughter but found that this second time around, corporate roles just weren’t fulfilling anymore. I bounced around for three years and in 2013 I’d had enough and finally took the leap of faith and went into business for myself.

I was really naive and just assumed that just like that, I would automatically have clients, and that because I’d been successful in corporate business (mind you as an employee, moving up the ranks in pay and promotion) that working for myself would be easy. IT WAS NOT. It wasn’t until about 4 or five years in where I started seeing real profitable results. But you know what nobody talks about in a world of Instagram happiness? Is failing. No one shows you the sales calls they didn’t win, the sales pitches they completely botched, the clients who never called back or went somewhere else.

Even now, while my business does make money - it’s not exactly where I want it to be. I’m always feeling like I’m behind, as though there’s more I could or should be doing. I watch other copywriters or agency owners and ask myself “is it time to start an agency?” And then the fraud voice kicks in - “an agency? Wait you? You don’t want to manage people.”

So on today’s episode of the podcast I thought we’d explore why failure is so challenging for business owners and how to take the pain out of it. We'll also discuss some strategies for bouncing back from failure and turning it into an opportunity for growth.

If you’ve been in business for a while, you’ve learned that failure is an inevitable part of the journey. It's not a matter of if you'll fail, but when.

So why is failure so challenging for business owners? What makes it so difficult to deal with? I mean what we normally hear is that failure provides valuable lessons and insights. I’ve even shared my favorite quote with you before from Meet The Robinsons “From Failing We Learn, From Success Not So Much.”

But failure can feel like a personal attack. When you pour your heart, soul, time, and money into a business, and it doesn't work out, it can be hard not to take it personally.

Failure can make you feel like you're not good enough, that you didn't try hard enough, or that you're not cut out for the business world. And these feelings can be overwhelming and make it hard to move on. They’re also really hard to talk about if you don’t have access to other business owners who have experienced the same thing. It feels unsafe and defeating to share our failures with our friends or on social media -so if you don’t have a coach, access to a network or mastermind group, I’d highly recommend you find one.

For example, one mastermind I’m a part of helps me see my strengths and limitations, and stops me from chasing shiny objects. I’m also able to sit in with other business owners and listen to some of their challenges so that I can learn from them and also feel like no matter how successful we think others are - they are in growth mode too.

One of the business coaches I work with, who now runs a successful marketing agency, generating millions in revenue - wasn’t always as successful as he is today. Prior to running his agency, he’d started a small online book business. He was extremely passionate about what the books he sold, niched down, so as not to compete with the likes of Amazon, and had high hopes for the business, but unfortunately, things didn't go as planned. Despite his best efforts, the business struggled to generate enough revenue to cover expenses, and eventually, he had to make the tough decision to close it down.

At the time he said he wasn’t very open about talking about this experience because he feared judgment and of course embarrassment. Entrepreneurship is often so glamorized with success, that admitting his business has failed felt like a personal failure as well. He also had a lot of fear about damaging his reputation, because he worried it might impact future opportunities.

Today he’s very open about it and hopes to help others avoid the mistakes he made. He now creates content around the importance of market research to better understand the competitive landscape.

One client, who I’ve been working with to write his digital course, helps business owners learn financial management and how having a contingency plan is absolutely ok - which is 180 from what we hear about going all in and burning the boats.

One way to react to failure and embrace mistakes is to consider that failing is learning, and learning is the longest phase of your journey in business. We all have to go through it because without it we can’t be successful. See failure as a sign that you’re challenging yourself to do something difficult. Write affirmations for yourself. A great one is “I can handle failure.”

A few years ago I was overseeing a large marketing project..I loved the work but the organization was the wrong fit for me. As I made the decision to let this client know I’d be stepping down, I worried a lot because this client was a huge source of revenue that generated over six figures for me. As I thought through the worst and best case scenario I reminded myself of the many times I’d found a way through. I used an affirmation from my mastermind coach “things are always working out for me.” And would you know it, shortly after giving notice I landed a brand new client that paid me a rather large amount for a big project.

Now of course that doesn’t always happen. But affirmations and a resilient mindset are powerful. Plus they allow us to attract the right people into our life.

Next, let’s talk about why it’s important to normalize failure.

Removing the fear of failure fosters innovation and open-mindedness, turning mistakes into opportunities for growth and improvement. Innovation and open-mindedness are qualities that are highly valued in today's world. They’re critical to staying competitive, growing and evolving personally and professionally. One of the things I most enjoyed about training real estate professionals years ago was working with new agents. The seasoned agents knew everything. One example is when about 10 years ago I mentioned something about LinkedIn to a “top producing agent.” I remember he laughed at me and said “nobody cares about LinkedIn.” And then you had the new agents who are always asking questions like “why are things done this way?” “What if we tried it this way?” Just imagine how many real estate agents would still be carrying around old MLS books if someone hadn’t adapted to looking for homes online.

One question I always ask business owners is this: “If someone were to try to put you out of business, how would they do it?” That question has helped many people take increased risks and try new things. Suffering from the curse of knowledge is a real thing and if you’re too worried about never failing you might not ever implement better processes or systems into your business - new innovation that could change everything. In the 90s, I might not have ever believed anything other than Blockbuster would exist - and now we laugh because we can’t imagine life without our streaming services.

There’s a part near the end of the Steve Jobs movie, where he’s listening to a discman that keeps skipping, and he just pokes at it frustrated. You and I now know, Steve could have said “I’m going to make an anti-skip discman.” Which other companies did do. Instead what did he do? Something we could have never imagined. He built the ipod shuffle. A gadget the size of a stick of gum that held up to 250 songs!!! Genius!!

But Steve might not have invented the ipod if he hadn't normalized failing over decades with the mac - as part of his MO.

Finally, quit the comparison. In our effort to learn from our peers or those who are where we want to be - we sometimes find ourselves sulking in comparing our failures to their highlight reel. This leads to negativity that will drain your energy and your focus. Don’t worry that others are more successful than you. Their success might be real, or it might be fake. I worked with an organization about 6 or 7 years ago that on the surface seemed like a highly profitable company. As I looked behind the scenes at their books - things were grim.

Another C suite leader I partnered with - on social media - sounded like he had all the answers. Sitting on his team as a fractional CMO - I watched his inability to make hard decisions or have difficult conversations and one of his divisions was a loss leader, but he lacked the courage to let the department head know.

Comparison is a huge damage to your self-esteem and it leads to this endless race for perfection, and in some cases a mental breakdown. The more you compare yourself to others the more you will feel not good enough.

Being a business owner is not for the faint-hearted. It takes guts, determination, and a whole lot of energy drinks, but I’m going to read you something Kobe Bryant said the day they retired both his jersey’s, that I will never forget and that I believe is a great reminder to us all...He said:

“If you do the work, if you work hard enough, dreams come true. You know that, we all know that. But hopefully what you get from tonight is that those times when you get up early and you work hard; those times when you stay up late and you work hard; those times when you don't feel like working — you’re too tired, you don’t want to push yourself — but you do it anyway. That is actually the dream. That’s the dream. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey. And if you guys can understand that, what you’ll see happen is that you won’t accomplish your dreams, your dreams won’t come true, something greater will.”

The key here is to see your path in business as a journey to be enjoyed rather than a destination to get to. Enjoy the ride, smile, laugh, and when you start to feel like you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, take a step back and remind yourself why you started this journey in the first place. I’m cheering you on.

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   Thanks for joining me today. I’m Ali Garbero, Copywriting is what I do, Content Marketing is what I create, more customers is what you get.