An Experiment in Failure: My Goal to Fail 10 Times this Month
You open up your P&L and there it is, staring you in the face with all it’s red text and minus signs — your net loss for the month. You feel heavy, hopeless, and like a complete failure.
But is that really what it is? I say no. Nobody likes to lose money, we can all agree on that. But what if it just means that you’re figuring it out? Something is currently failing, yes. But your business, and more importantly you, are not failing. Here’s why:
Defining Failure
Numbers are just facts — facts about how your business performed over a specific time period. It’s not a moral judgment or an assessment off who you are. When the numbers are positive it means things are working in your business, and when they’re negative it means something isn’t working. It doesn’t mean that you aren’t working. The numbers are a guidepost and a sign that maybe it’s time to tweak something or try something different.
Why Fail?
Business is a constant game of trying new things to see if they’ll work. You run a Facebook ad, it doesn’t go well, you tweak it and try again. It’s a small failure that moves you further down the path of figuring out what will work. But if you give up after the first attempt and proclaim that you suck at Facebook ads, or that they’re too complicated, then you’ll be no closer to figuring it out. When you give up on something after a small setback, that’s a true failure. Dave Ramsey loves to say that “Success is a pile of failure. You're just standing on top of it and not underneath it.”
“Success is a pile of failure. You're just standing on top of it and not underneath it.” - Dave Ramsey
And as a side note, trying again doesn’t mean reworking the whole process. Change something small and try it again, change something else small and try again. Rinse and repeat until you make progress. There’s no need to overhaul everything at once when you do that you can’t pinpoint what it was that truly made the difference. You’re failing forward in small increments. When it works, you’ve leaped forward, when it doesn’t work you’re still one step closer to figuring it out.
Practicing the art of failing
So how do we move past the fear of failure? How do we get back up when the numbers are less than impressive. when the ad fails, when the prospective client says no? We practice failing. We make the conscious decision to attempt something we’re likely to fail. We try again and again and again until we’ve learned. Until we’ve learned that failing isn’t so bad, it’s not as detrimental as it feels.
Friends, I struggle with failure. I hate being bad at things. This can be traced back to learning to tie my shoes (as my mother constantly likes to remind me). I'm trying hard to embrace doing new things and failing at them, so much so that I've decided to fail at 10 things this month — 10 things I avoid doing because I'm afraid to fail. So far I've taken a hand-lettering class and I'm running a Facebook ad (which is doing surprisingly well). On the docket soon is making a fancy dinner, taking a cookie decorating class, trying out a more difficult Crossfit class, and doing a Facebook live (seriously terrified of that one).
What's one thing you're going to be brave enough to be bad at this month? I'd love to hear all about it!
And if you need some help digging into your P&L to figure out what might not be working then check out the Quarterly Bookkeeping Professional Review. We’ll dive in, make sure all your transactions are categorized correctly and we’ll analyze how your business is doing and where to focus your efforts the next quarter. Check it out here.
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