Sara Blakely, the founder of SPANX, encourages people to ask this question of themselves and those around them, How did you fail today?” She says encouraging failure is critical to fostering an entrepreneurial mind. Her father asked her this question often when she was a young girl to make it clear that failure meant you tried something new.
I love this perspective on failure because it is simply part of the process when starting something new, navigating new or uncertain circumstances, expanding into higher levels of leadership, or advancing in expertise in an industry or skill set. When it comes to marketing technology, I’m not afraid to try new things. I do it all the time. This week I tried, failed, and then after figuring out the app nuances – minus instructions, I succeeded with the Story Splitter App! I was able to splice a couple of 2-3 minute videos into 20-sec segments and upload them to Stories. I enjoyed the challenge. No stress.
On the other hand, I set an aggressive new sales goal for myself in Quarter 1 to increase monthly sales by 50% in the first quarter compared to the last quarter. This kind of goal isn’t as easy for me. I’ve tried before and failed. This time, I broke the goal down into a daily sales volume and that helped me see my way to the bigger number. I failed to meet the goal in January and February, but my numbers were still up from Q4 in 2020 and that was very exciting. In March, I hit the goal before month end! I’m glad I pushed through the failure! I’m working to develop my stamina in this area and treat it like learning a new app. It was almost fun! LOL
Have you recently tried something new and failed?
