WHAT I'VE LEARNED FROM THIS YEAR’S FAILURES

People often look at my success and assume I haven’t had any failures. Excuse me while I laugh. Have you seen my recent blooper reel?

The truth is that I have experienced plenty of failure, and many are a lot worse than a flubbed line. I just don’t usually publicize them.

Here are three failures, just from this year:

1- Batch releasing my posts - I thought people would love this. They could binge-listen to my show, just like Netflix, right? As it turns out, not so much. Yes, I had a few hundred fans do this, but it’s barely worth the effort. I doubt it is something I will continue.

2- Best Year Ever launch video - I use one of the best video app on the planet. But sometimes you have no time to launch video for 10 days or more. Just the same with my posts.

3- Best Year Ever Leaders Edition - My overall launch has been hugely successful. I literally have doubled my services from last year. However, one piece never got off the ground at all.

I shot three videos for a special Leaders Edition, but I wasn’t happy with the results, so I scrapped them. I then rebuilt the entire course from the ground up, but I still wasn’t happy with the final product, so I scrapped that, too.

Then were dozens of other mistakes, too, most of which I recovered from. But still, across the board, these mistakes represented a significant negative impact on my business - not only in expense and burden on my team, but also in lost revenue.

If you’ve ever had a product slip or not ship at all, you know what a massive face-palm it can be. But still, in spite of these failures - or maybe because of them - I've managed to double my revenues and profit for the year.

But while failure, mistakes, and bloopers are inevitable for all of us, we can choose to respond in ways that help us on the road to success. Here are six steps for making sure your failures move you forward.

1- Acknowledge the failure - There’s no point avoiding the obvious. The first step for processing failure is to admit our initiative, product, or promotion just didn’t work. We have to be willing to say, “Now that was a failure”. Rather than defending it, there’s enormous freedom in simply declaring it.

2- Take responsibility for it - More then merely acknowledging it, we need to own up to our part in the failure. Blaming outside forces, including other people, might cushion the blow to our ego, but it won’t let us get beyond what went wrong or what was missing. More importantly, it won’t move us forward.

3- Mourn it (if necessary) - Some mistakes are simple things we can blow off - like thirty-seven takes on a simple video. (I’m not making that up.) But others are major emotional letdowns. There’s nothing wrong with being real in the midst of a disappointment. Grieving is often a natural part of helping us get beyond a setback.

4- Learn from it - Once we’ve faced our failures for what they are, we can begin to analyze them for what went wrong and why. There’s learning in the middle of every letdown. For example, I’ve gone over the Leaders Edition failure in my head a dozen times and now see several things I will do differently next year. I can hardly wait to get started!

5- Adjust your behavior - Learning leads to action. Whether it’s retrying a video take in a different way or reworking a major product, once we learn from our mistakes we can act in ways that minimize or even leapfrog those problems going forward. In this sense failure always serves to make us better - if we allow it.

6- Enter into the next project - Failure is part of life. But so is success. It just takes working through our setbacks and staying on the path. A process like this can reframe our failures so we see them as practice - and even the vital preparation - for success. So what are you waiting for? Like I say in the blooper reel, a lot, “Let’s try that again”.

Failure is inevitable, but we can choose to respond in ways that accelerate our journey to success. In other words, if at first you don’t succeed … you’re normal. But - and this is big - we don’t have to be defined by our failures. We can work through them, get past them, and let them fuel our eventual success.

What setbacks have you experienced recently and what have you learned from them?

WHAT SEPARATES THE SUCCESSFUL FROM THE UNSUCCESSFUL

People often ask me how I’ve been able to build a successful business that’s that has survived two big crises and has been steadily for the last 11 years.

I had similar wins in the corporate world. I was able to set some audacious goals and beat them again and again. This has been a pattern for me professionally, but I have a secret: I’ve never assumed I could do it on my own. So how have I done it?

Here’s the answer: I always invest in the best training I can get my hands on. As far as I can tell, that’s the main thing that separates the successful from the unsuccessful. It’s how I’ve been able to consistently grow both my leadership and my business.

I stress the word invest. I’ve utilized plenty of free resources over the years, and there is some amazing help to discover in something as cheap as a ten dollar ebook. But the real jumps have been when I’ve matched the money to the momentum I expected to achieve.

You get what you pay for

There’s nothing magic about a price tag, but there’s also truth in the old adage that you get what you pay for. I have paid hundreds of dollars for conferences, consultants, coaches, and online courses over the years and without exception these investments have been the catalysts for breakthroughs in my business.

One reason is that the cost demands my full engagement. I’m not about to waste my hard-earned money. But that’s not the main reason. It’s not even the second or third.

What we don’t know

Most of us experience those times when we want to get to another, better place. It could be in our professional or personal life. Regardless of what it is, we feel like we’ve plateaued and we don’t know how to get to the next level. It feels like we don’t know how because - are you ready for this? - we don’t know! We all have certain insights and skills that have gotten us to where we are. But those insights and skills may not be enough to go beyond.

I’m not going to improve my swimming until I know what improvement looks like. In the same way, I’m not going to grow my business until I know what to do differently than I’m doing now. That’s where premium training comes in. It’s an infusion of information that you can leverage to go to the next level.

3 Reasons to fund four own success

The right training may cost you. In fact it probably will, and it might cost you a lot. But I think there are three key reasons we have to be willing to invest in ourselves:

1- Mindset - We know what we know, and it’s not always enough. That’s not only true for the bare facts and data we need to learn, but it’s also true for the different frames of mind, the different angles, that we can’t just generate on our own.

2- Strategy - There are two ways to learn winning strategies: We can get it by trial and error - usually lots of error - or we can have someone else give us the inside scoop, saving us tons of time and effort. Even if it costs us money in the meantime, if it’s the right information, it’ll save us that in the long run too.

3- Skills - Sometimes the most important thing we need to learn to go to the next level is a simple skill set. Ballroom dancing is great example. So is time management and the kind of productivity hacks that lop ten hours off your workweek. To win in certain areas, you need specialized skills - and you can pay someone to teach you. I’ve always followed this basic assumption, and it’s true for all of us: To be successful, we need teachers, and our success is worth funding.

What have you done and invested to take your business to the next level?