How to Never Fail
Every once in a while, my husband stops me in my (verbal) tracks. Today, it was a conversation I was having about my business, and about how one of the services I offered was causing me unending problems. It’s a good moneymaker, but holy smokes – it was taking up all MY time and the time of others on my team.
“I’m so mad at myself for failing at this. I look around and everyone seems to have their shit together!” I was saying to him.
“Stop. You have failed at nothing. Look at what you’ve accomplished so far. That’s not failure. That’s an out-of-the-ballpark-success honey.”
So I actually stopped talking (a rather incredible feat) and realized he was right.
There’s Only One Way to Fail: To Quit
Everything else is just trying, and fixing, adjusting, renegotiating, and trying again. That’s not failure. It’s fixing things that just aren’t working.
Thomas Edison laughed at those that said he “failed” 3,000 times to invent the light bulb. “I did not fail,” he said. “I just tried 3,000 times and it didn’t work.”
For a lot of my clients, I build sales funnels that deliver a steady stream of leads. These are cold traffic leads, the ones that take the MOST time, and so I help them build automation sequences to ease the follow-up requirements.
HOWEVER, at some stage it’s up to them to pick up the reins and wrestle those cold leads into warm ones, and then into hot, sweet, profitable clients.
Perseverance = Conversions
It’s not particularly fun sometimes to follow up endlessly on these leads, but 80% of new business is closed on 12 or more touches, so suck it up, buttercup, and get going! I never stop bugging my prospects until they tell me to heave-off – and neither should you.
Failure is not when things don’t work. It’s not when you nearly go bankrupt (been there – twice). It’s not when your clients are yelling at you. It’s not when the program you spent years working on doesn’t take hold with the people you thought wanted it.
Failure is quitting in the face of these obstacles.
As long as you never quit, you CANNOT fail.
How’s that for motivation? Go be awesome. I can’t wait to see it.
Rebecca