Category Archives: Failure

How Did You Fail This Week…Embrace Failure

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“Failure is not the outcome; failure is not trying. Don’t be afraid to fail.” ~ Sara Blakely, Spanx Founder and CEO

There is tremendous value in embracing your mistakes and learning invaluable lessons from them. Failure is nothing to be afraid of.

Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, said that as a child, her father encouraged failure and as would pose an unusual question to her and her brother over dinner: “How did you fail this week?”

“He encouraged us to fail, and not to be afraid of it,” she told me. “If we didn’t have something to tell him that week, he would be disappointed.”

When Blakely tried out for the cheerleading squad and was “horrible and didn’t make it,” he high-fived her. When she revealed that she lost her campaign for senior class president, he told her that was amazing.

Blakely says she learned to find her hidden gifts in moments of disappointment or error. Instead of locking up in fear when things go wrong, she says people must find the beauty in these moments.

 

References:

  1. https://leaders.com/articles/women-in-business/sara-blakely-spanx/

Embrace Risk and Failure

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Failure is simply a matter of an individual’s perspective and mindset.

To be successful in business and life, you must be willing to take risks and, therefore, accept failure. Jeff Bezos, founder and former CEO of Amazon, believed it’s essential to view failures and setbacks “as helpful obstacles that drive learning.”

“Whatever your goals are, don’t give up no matter how hard it gets,” he stated. Great businesses and organizations don’t exist to grow and make money. Instead, they solve societal problems, from tiny issues to giant dilemmas.

The first step to problem-solving involves defining what that problem is. The key is to get to the root of the problem. One of the best ways to discover the root cause of a problem is by utilizing the 5 Whys method. When a problem happens, could you ask why it happened five times? In theory, the last answer should get to the heart of the issue.

Bezos has long encouraged his teams at Amazon and others to take big risks and embrace failures. In 2019, Bezos told Amazon associates: “We need big failures if we’re going to move the needle — billion-dollar scale failures. And if we’re not, we’re not swinging hard enough.”

References:

  1. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/03/jeff-bezos-on-failure-dont-give-up-no-matter-how-hard-it-gets.html
  2. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/13/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-on-how-to-succeed-in-business.html

According to Jeff Bezos, it’s essential for an entrepreneur to “be a missionary,” you “can’t be mercenary,” meaning that you have to be mission-motivated, not money-motivated.

“Missionaries build better products and services — they always win,” said Bezos. “Mercenaries are just trying to make money, and paradoxically, the missionaries always end up making more money.”

FTX Debacle and Lessons Learned

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The lessons investors can learn from the FTX debacle are not all that new or even groundbreaking. But, the lessons are important ones for investors to learn who desire to build long-term wealth and achieve financial freedom.

The significant lessons are the importance of investors understanding an asset and doing thorough research on companies in which they intend to invest.

In FTX’s case, here is a company, led by it’s under thirty CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), that in three years grew from relative nothing to $32B literally overnight. It’s meteoric rise attracted thousands of investors who were more than happy to invest their capital in a young company and its brash CEO.

Yet, by performing just basic research on how the company made its money, on the experience and acumen of the CEO, and on the executive management team, and on the company’s financial profitability would have raised red flag to cause serious investor to pause before investing their capital in the company.

Additionally, SBF, FTX’s thirty-something CEO was consider a “wunder-kid” of sorts and featured by Forbes as its #2 “The Forbes 400” in 2022.

In a relatively short time, SBF took FTX from near zero is capitalization to $32B. His feats caused both seasoned and retail investors to flock to FTX.

Now, at the beginning of the week, FTX possessed a capitalization of $32. By Friday, FTX was at near zero capitalization, SBF had resigned, and the luster and shine of the once high flying company had been completely tarnished.

Thus, this is a classic and stark example why investors must understand and do thorough research, and remain disciplined before investing their capital.

References:

  1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2022/09/27/10-under-40-the-youngest-billionaires-on-the-2022-forbes-400/?sh=2455189c397e

Dare to be Daring

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“I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity, is daring to dare.” ~ Maya Angelou

Risk-taking is the act of exposing yourself to potential failure, danger, harm, or loss.

While that might not always sound like a great idea and may push you beyond your personal comfort zone, the adage, “No risk, no reward” rings true regardless of how you feel about potential failures. You have to put yourself out there and move beyond your comfort zone in order to get what you want and to succeed.

History is repeat with those individuals who took the biggest risks and fought against the greatest odds and they were the ones that have been remembered. “You can’t outwit fate by standing on the sidelines placing little sidebets about the outcome of life. Either you wade in and risk everything you have to play the game or you don’t play at all. And if you don’t play you can’t win,” states Judith McNaught.

“It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.” Seneca

Thus, dream boldly and reach for the stars. You, and most people, are more capable and able to live their dreams and achieve the big audacious goals if only they’re willing to believe, focus, work hard, be patient and persist. “It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don’t. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever,” writes Philip Adams

References:

  1. https://www.inhersight.com/blog/career-development/taking-risks-quotes
  2. https://www.maverickmindsets.com/blog-posts/quotes-on-risk-taking/

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, and catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” ~ Mark Twain

Failure is Always an Option

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“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” ~ Elon Musk

Most people are afraid of failure. Yet, there is nothing new about failure, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of either. No one wants to fail at what they do, especially if it’s something they’re very invested in.

Elon Musk has a very simple way of not letting the prospect of failure get in his way, according to Jenny Medeiros at Goalcast. He doesn’t avoid failure or hope that it doesn’t happen, instead, he anticipates that it will occur.

Getting comfortable with the idea of failing isn’t easy. But there are steps, according to Medeiros, you can take to create a well-thought contingency plan when failure happens.

  1. Take a pen and paper right and write down a project you’ve always been meaning to start but haven’t due to the fear of not being successful.
  2. Now, write down the absolute worst-case scenario for that project. It could be losing money, wasting time, public embarrassment, etc.
  3. Next, break down the causes of this worst-case scenario. Then cross out the ones that are out of your control.
  4. Finally, write a contingency plan for each cause you can control. If you’re worried that no one will want to buy your designer socks, your plan could be to re-use those designs on other products like t-shirts or even notebooks.

The important thing here is to always expect and be willing to embrace failure, and be ready for it. Only then will it stop being the reason you don’t move forward with your goals.

Surrendering to failure is never the answer. Instead, learning from your mistakes is the best gift you can give yourself to improve not only whatever new invention, business venture or dream you undertake, but to evolve as individual, leader and innovator.

Musk learned from his own mistakes. He says:

“Constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”

“The biggest lesson you can learn from Musk is to never, ever give up on your goals,” writes Bonnie Burton in an Inc Magazine article. “Life has a pesky way of placing big obstacles in your path — whether it be unmotivated employees, health emergencies, failed experiments, impostor syndrome and so many more unexpected roadblocks.”

References:

  1. https://www.goalcast.com/elon-musks-1-tactic-to-never-be-afraid-of-failure/
  2. https://www.inc.com/bonnie-burton/a-big-lesson-new-inventors-can-learn-from-elon-musks-mistakes.html