The mantra of this age is “Don’t be afraid to fail” because that is how you learn and Seth Godin, a noted entrepreneur and innovator has even made the catch phrase “keep shipping” part of his success persona. For him it means to stop looking for perfection, to simply create something that has meaning to you, and send it out to the world. Based on that expression, the expectation for a lot of people is… and things will work out, when in reality it is far from it. The current podcast episode walks you through why.
Taking action means accepting the risk of failure and like it or not that is part of life. Risk means being willing to dare, putting your reputation on the line, or being willing to accept that you don’t have all the answers and are still willing to experiment based on the information you currently have. But more than anything, getting an outcome you can be proud of means you have to be willing to sit down and figure out what did not work and why. No amount of telling yourself I’m going to keep sending stuff out there is going to make a difference until you accept that some of it will drop like rock, and you need to understand why. And yes, that means trying, failing, and then trying again until you get a result you can live with.
Here a few examples of what I mean:
Everyone thinks of Henry Ford as a great success and yet his early businesses failed. He actually went broke five times before he founded the Ford Motor Company. He turned what was an expensive curiosity into something that revolutionized the 20th century after amazing failures and even being forced out of a company that he founded. He learned something from each of these defeats and used the information to build a company that included all the elements the other didn’t have.
Orville and Wilbur Wright who developed one of the original airplanes originally designed and developed their own printing press that they used to run of all things, a print shop. From this venture they formed a newspaper that worked as a weekly but lasted only four months as a daily. Their knowledge of mechanics was a natural fit for moving on to repairing bicycles that allowed them to make the jump to flight.
Dr. Seuss, the Green Eggs and Ham guy, was known to sometimes spend up to a year on a book, and it was not uncommon for him to throw out 95% of his original material. Despite the attention to detail, his work was rejected 30 times before it finally caught on.
J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame was broke and divorced with a child. Seven years after graduating from college, and described herself as clinically depressed. After some reflection she channeled her feelings into the characters known as “Dementors” in her books. Twelve publisher rejections later she was a success.
The examples provided are simply to give you an indication that not only do you have to be persistent and resilient but also willing to analyze what is not working. Not everything you attempt will work, that is a given, but building on what did not work and why is what saves the day to go on and produce the things that will make you proud you kept shipping.
I would love to hear any examples you have of similar experiences.
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