I like simple. Easy. Straight-forward. I don't like to over-think stuff. So when it comes to chasing the perfect "success" - which requires detailed planning, perfect execution, and no room for error... it all just seems like too much work. I'd never start. And if I did, what are my guarantees? It could take forever!
I much rather enjoy trying stuff as fast as I can, making changes, learning, and then trying again. In some cases, failing over and over and eventually hitting success, in other cases - letting go and trying something else. One of Richard and my heroes is leadership and management "guru" Tom Peters. Tom has said, "Whoever Tries The Most Stuff And Screws The Most Stuff Up The Fastest Wins" among other great points extolling the virtues of failing fast. For us, we'll just stick to failing our way to success. Avoiding failure is just too much work.
Showing posts with label success. Show all posts
Showing posts with label success. Show all posts
Monday, January 23, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
Fail Big, Fail Fast, Fail Well
If you want to make serious progress this year, take my advice and start failing. Seth Godin was interviewed on video a while back saying, "If I fail more than you do, I win."
Don't make 2012 the year you played it safe.
Fail Big. How? Look for outrageous projects, big clients, crazy ventures - and don't do anything unless it gives you butterflies in your stomach. When you have those... that's the test - you know it's big enough.
Fail Fast. Learn from your failures and make the adjustments quickly. Appreciate the failures and keep going and trying.
Fail Well. If you have a cat you know that they like to race around for a few minutes each day followed by hours of napping. So our cat, Courage, comes speeding through the living room toward his 6 foot cat tree. He springs up - flings his front legs into the air - claws out - prepared to grab onto the side of the perch. He totally misses the jump and falls backward. It was ugly and I saw the whole thing. Courage turned around and saw me; he was stunned. He rubbed his paw over his face a couple times and walked it off. Now that's failing well. It's gonna happen. People may even see it happen. Just walk it off. Try again better.
Don't make 2012 the year you played it safe.
Fail Big. How? Look for outrageous projects, big clients, crazy ventures - and don't do anything unless it gives you butterflies in your stomach. When you have those... that's the test - you know it's big enough.
Fail Fast. Learn from your failures and make the adjustments quickly. Appreciate the failures and keep going and trying.
Fail Well. If you have a cat you know that they like to race around for a few minutes each day followed by hours of napping. So our cat, Courage, comes speeding through the living room toward his 6 foot cat tree. He springs up - flings his front legs into the air - claws out - prepared to grab onto the side of the perch. He totally misses the jump and falls backward. It was ugly and I saw the whole thing. Courage turned around and saw me; he was stunned. He rubbed his paw over his face a couple times and walked it off. Now that's failing well. It's gonna happen. People may even see it happen. Just walk it off. Try again better.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Failure Experts tout Mika Brzezinski’s new book, "Knowing Your Value” ...
Okay while we are NOT in love with her political leanings... we have to give kudos to MSNBC, "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski's new book, "Knowing Your Value" where besides telling her own story of hard fought battles to get paid what she felt she was worth (admitting a lot of failure and missteps along the way) she actually goes out of her way to encourage women to get over their fears of rejection and being told 'no.' A skill that Mika points out, most women lack especially compared to most men. She recounts a story told to her of one woman having lunch with her boss, asking for a raise and then bursting into tears after he said "no." Women most definitely need to learn to use "no" to their advantage (Go for No!) - asking more and learning to take more no's! This book is another step in the right direction. Read our recent press release here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/6/prweb8597579.htm
Friday, June 3, 2011
Failure gets a good rap from Seth Godin
Seth Godin on How He Started As an Entrepreneur
It's always refreshing to see an iconic business personality like Seth Godin espouse the virtue of failure. Check out the short video and remember this lesson: "If I fail more than you do, I win."
It's always refreshing to see an iconic business personality like Seth Godin espouse the virtue of failure. Check out the short video and remember this lesson: "If I fail more than you do, I win."
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Opportunity May Knock (and Say NO!)
Around 2005, after help from an agent, we had a very close call with a book publisher - a REALLY big one in NYC. A BIG ONE! They were literally about to sign us and our book, "Go for No!"
In fact, we expected an offer to be faxed over with a day or two. However... they had just a couple more questions for us - how big was our "platform" and how big were our audiences, and oh yes -- how many books would we buy?... well, back then even though we had sold somewhere around 30,000 copies of the book, it wasn't quite good enough and at that time we still weren't quite "big" enough for them to take the risk on us. So they passed. That was a BIG NO! We were pretty disappointed but we did not give up on our mission to spread the power of NO!
Now as it turns out, this was just the beginning for our little book. Because although it took another 5 years, we made the Amazon best seller list (in the Sales & Selling niche) and have hovered on the list in the top 10 for the last two years. And as of now, early 2011, we have sold nearly 200,000 copies! We have had the book translated in French, Dutch, German, Chinese, Hindi, Hungarian to name a few. Besides Amazon, we are not in book stores. It was through the support and encouragement of some key people + fantastic word of mouth + relentlessly getting known and getting the word out.
Contrary to what you've heard, opportunity does not knock. YOU knock... and opportunity answers. Unfortunately, it often says, "NO!" Don't give up. Don't let those NO's - even the "BIG" ones, deter you from doing what you believe you were meant to do!
In fact, we expected an offer to be faxed over with a day or two. However... they had just a couple more questions for us - how big was our "platform" and how big were our audiences, and oh yes -- how many books would we buy?... well, back then even though we had sold somewhere around 30,000 copies of the book, it wasn't quite good enough and at that time we still weren't quite "big" enough for them to take the risk on us. So they passed. That was a BIG NO! We were pretty disappointed but we did not give up on our mission to spread the power of NO!
Now as it turns out, this was just the beginning for our little book. Because although it took another 5 years, we made the Amazon best seller list (in the Sales & Selling niche) and have hovered on the list in the top 10 for the last two years. And as of now, early 2011, we have sold nearly 200,000 copies! We have had the book translated in French, Dutch, German, Chinese, Hindi, Hungarian to name a few. Besides Amazon, we are not in book stores. It was through the support and encouragement of some key people + fantastic word of mouth + relentlessly getting known and getting the word out.
Contrary to what you've heard, opportunity does not knock. YOU knock... and opportunity answers. Unfortunately, it often says, "NO!" Don't give up. Don't let those NO's - even the "BIG" ones, deter you from doing what you believe you were meant to do!
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Unseen, Untold, Unsold
Richard tells a great story about his "fleet sales legend" father, Don. The story goes...
"When I first started in the car business, I noticed that my father had a piece of masking tape stuck to the back of his telephone receiver. On it, he had written three words:
Unseen. Untold. Unsold.
Being new to the business I asked my dad what it meant. He said, "Selling is nothing more than telling your story to as many people as you can… as fast as you can. If the prospect remains unseen and untold… they will forever remain unsold."
It doesn’t get any simpler than that! When you get back to most basic elements of your business, this is what it is all about. Unseen. Untold. Unsold.
"When I first started in the car business, I noticed that my father had a piece of masking tape stuck to the back of his telephone receiver. On it, he had written three words:
Unseen. Untold. Unsold.
Being new to the business I asked my dad what it meant. He said, "Selling is nothing more than telling your story to as many people as you can… as fast as you can. If the prospect remains unseen and untold… they will forever remain unsold."
It doesn’t get any simpler than that! When you get back to most basic elements of your business, this is what it is all about. Unseen. Untold. Unsold.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Harry Potter Author's "Benefits of Failure"
Our good friend Patrick Galvin of Galvin Communications is always sharing cool stuff with us. Today he sent us a link to JK Rowling's Harvard commencement in which she talks about the benefits of failure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pucdJHjZaqs.
Our favorite line... paraphrased... "If you do not fail then you're living so timid a life that then, in itself, is a failure."
Our favorite line... paraphrased... "If you do not fail then you're living so timid a life that then, in itself, is a failure."
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Failing Your Way to Success Part 2
When it comes to our ROAR! E-Zine, we are definitely living the fail your way to success philosophy more than we probably ever imagined. This evening I am faced with yet another technical difficulty (the e-zine was sent basically "unreadable") and I realize that I have a choice.
Having recently began an in depth study of the book Play to Win! Choosing Growth Over Comfort in Work and Life by Larry & Hersch Wilson (a brilliant book) I know that the key strategy in these moments is to: 1) Stop 2) Challenge and 3) Choose. The challenge part being to challenge our assumptions and paradigms about how bad the situation really is. The reality is many of us take failures to an extreme with "end of the world" thinking.
When we started our business, almost ten years ago now, Rich and I had a printed newsletter that we mailed out to subscribers. We would agonize for hours editing and making sure everything was perfect. Upon getting our second issue back from the printer we discovered that the footer of the front page still said 'Premier Issue'. We then agonized and debated on what to do about this. Finally we decided to print out fluorescent stickers (labels actually) with a little message to our readership. It fit perfectly over the words premier issue and looked decent enough. I remember being quite upset about this "fiasco" at the time plus all the extra work it caused but I think this story illustrates two key points.
The first is, we are brilliant problem solvers and the second is... we now look back on that and laugh. We aren't nearly as crazed. We know now that turning "failures" into catastrophes does not serve us. Failing is art of the joy of what we do, it means we are living, learning, and growing.
So I choose to relax, understanding that this is at most inconvenient and that some day soon even this minor annoyance will weave itself into the tapestry that are the failures and successes of my life experience.
Having recently began an in depth study of the book Play to Win! Choosing Growth Over Comfort in Work and Life by Larry & Hersch Wilson (a brilliant book) I know that the key strategy in these moments is to: 1) Stop 2) Challenge and 3) Choose. The challenge part being to challenge our assumptions and paradigms about how bad the situation really is. The reality is many of us take failures to an extreme with "end of the world" thinking.
When we started our business, almost ten years ago now, Rich and I had a printed newsletter that we mailed out to subscribers. We would agonize for hours editing and making sure everything was perfect. Upon getting our second issue back from the printer we discovered that the footer of the front page still said 'Premier Issue'. We then agonized and debated on what to do about this. Finally we decided to print out fluorescent stickers (labels actually) with a little message to our readership. It fit perfectly over the words premier issue and looked decent enough. I remember being quite upset about this "fiasco" at the time plus all the extra work it caused but I think this story illustrates two key points.
The first is, we are brilliant problem solvers and the second is... we now look back on that and laugh. We aren't nearly as crazed. We know now that turning "failures" into catastrophes does not serve us. Failing is art of the joy of what we do, it means we are living, learning, and growing.
So I choose to relax, understanding that this is at most inconvenient and that some day soon even this minor annoyance will weave itself into the tapestry that are the failures and successes of my life experience.
Monday, December 11, 2006
The Case for Failing
Most of us are so worried about succeeding that we do everything within our power to avoid "failing." And that is a sure recipe for mediocre performance. As Thomas Watson (Senior Founder of IBM) said, "If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate." We couldn't agree more. That is why when it comes achieving breakthrough performance, we say fail more! Fail faster! History is littered with "successful failures" - people who tried and failed over and over eventually finding more success then they ever imagined.
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