Phil’s Friday Failure Post & 3 Ways I Hammered Failure in the Gut.

Phil Gerbyshak is taking some time to discuss the fear of failure. His post Friday Failure Quotes discusses 3 people who inspired him to keep reaching even though failure might come.

“As 2008 is quickly coming to a conclusion, I thought it’d be nice to reflect on failure.Failure? Really?

Yep, it’s time to learn from failure, and from what 3 people way smarter than me had to say about failure, but that sum up my feelings very succinctly….

…Today, shift your thinking about failure, and think about it as a learning opportunity instead of as something to fear.”

If you find yourself wallowing in fear or hand wringing over whether you will fail or not, 2008 – no today is time to stop. We can all have setbacks. You can be poor and fail at something. You can be rich and fail at something too. Life does not discriminate.

I’ve fallen off the horse so many times it’s not funny. I’ve built businesses that I’ve had to close the door on. I’ve pursued careers that weren’t right for me (Cisco CCIE anyone?) And I’ve had my share of relationships go south. But in all of those situations I’ve come out better for it.

Here are 3 ways that failing has been a benefit to my life:

1. Failing at business - When my first side-business failed, it was pretty painful. I had to admit to myself and to others it wasn’t working. I had to sell off inventory. But there was a good side. I got to walk away and stop worrying about it. Sure, it hurt at first. But a week or so later I was free! But freedom wasn’t the only benefit.

I became shrewd at decision making. I could more easily spot a shady deal than I was before. Once bitten twice shy.

Failure benefit: Overall, the lesson I learned was if you invest a buck, you need to bring back 2 in return. If you are investing money but not getting anything back – the business doesn’t work.

Emotion won’t make it succeed. Motivation won’t either. The only thing that will make a business succeed is more money coming in than is going out.

Once I understood that…it was on! My next business was going to have the most minimal amount of overhead as humanly possible. And the profits would have to be at or near 100%. That’s why I got into building software and blogging as my next business. Both have very low overhead since you just have your site, bandwidth and domain costs. But the profit potential is outstanding.

It costs almost zero dollars to distribute software using download links (at least in the beginning), most of the price comes in “sweat equity”. You work for it. Only later does the price of development go up when I’ve had to hire people to help me keep up with demand. But even then, the main equation of for every dollar that goes out, I need to bring two back in.

You see, had someone just told me to create a successful business I had to bring in 2 dollars for every 1 I spent, I would have argued. I would have thought “how dumb is that?” So I had to pay the price of failure to learn that lesson. And it has paid me back royally for years.
2. Failing at a career - I was once a chef. I was okay at it. However, it wasn’t my cup-o-tea. I worked hard in the business, but every day there was more of it to do. Like the post office, no matter how much cooking you did on Monday, the same amount had to be done on Tuesday, Wednesday and so on. It was far too repetative for my longing for adventure.

It was difficult to admit that my blood, sweat and parsley hadn’t paid off.

Failure benefit #1: Giving up on a dream that wasn’t right freed me to pursue my heart’s desire. I was always curious about computers and programming. I had just never thought of doing it as a career. A year and a half of intense, but refreshing study later I had my shot. there was no turning back. This was the life!

Failure benefit #2: Cooking is a tough job. I knew what hard work was. Computers, networking and programming is not hard. It’s challenging, it can be frustrating at times, but hard? No, not hard. But since I knew hard work, I worked harder at computing services, compared to cooking for a couple hundred of people, fixing an Exchange meltdown was a walk in the park. So the contrast of hard work vs. easier benefited me in that it is easier for me to provide better service than my competition – thus reap the rewards accordingly.

3. Failing at relationships: “Breaking up is hard to do…” You’re damn skippy! We’ve all had our hearts broken at one time or another. I even had a few women who chose my birthday to clobber me with the bad news.

But I’m not just an innocent victim. I’ve had to do the breaking up too. And you know what? I don’t think it’s that much easier than being dumped. It cuts both ways. A failed relationship is a failure no matter who does the Dear John letter.

Failure benefit: All the pain involved in failed relationships is worth it if you pay attention to why things didn’t work out. It might take a few times where you get kicked in the head before you start to get a clue. But for me, I learned what I wanted and didn’t want in a relationship.

As an old fashioned guy, I didn’t need a wild-child. I’m humble, so a socialite wouldn’t be a good match for me either. For me, I needed someone down to earth, laid back and someone who always tries to do the right thing. That’s how I knew Kim was the right woman for me – she was and is all of those. Hey, we just celebrated our 14 year anniversary. So failing at all those other relationships has paid off nicely thank you!

Although failure hurts at the time, try to think about how you’ll be thankful it happened sometime down the road.

What I’ve learned is that by keeping at it, you start to get an edge on failure. Failing is only temporary. It’s like any other problem – there is a solution. You can either stick with it and solve the problem or pick another problem to solve. But whichever you choose, stick with it. You will eventually beat it back. When you do that, failure itself eventually gets tired of not succeeding and will go bother someone else.

I know many of you have had experiences where what seemed a dramatic failure turned out to be an incredible blessing. Please give some hope to others who might be fearing failure by posting your story in the comments below. Thanks!