Success vs Failure; Do you know what it means to fail better? – Leadership NB Prompt #8

Identify ten popular items that at least one person you know can’t stand.

  1. Beatles (Car & I’m sure the band too)
  2. Onions
  3. McDonald’s
  4. iPhone
  5. Android Phone
  6. Mac Computers
  7. Windows Computers
  8. iTunes Radio
  9. Podcasts
  10. Coffee

When someone criticizes a true success (Avatar, Star Wars, the iPhone, pizza) that doesn’t automatically mean the thing is bad. It means the person criticizing it is keeping score of something different, has a different worldview, wants different things!

The purpose of this exercise is to help you understand that even GREAT stuff isn’t universally liked. Create a list of popular things that some people don’t like to help you stop looking for universal approval and instead, realize that leadership is about being important to some people, not liked by all people.

They’re some missing components here. When I watching the video I was thinking about what an important message it is that failure happens. How vital it is to understand that what may appear as a failure to you can be a success to someone else.

Did you ever consider that?

Plenty of people try again and again, and sometimes they fail, but when they fail at the right things, I don’t see it as a failure. I’d rather fail at trying to get a charity off of the ground that is looking to help a group of people who need it. However, I’d rather not start a business that is looking to overcharge or overwork the same group by dismissing them as unsophisticated or unimportant. On that same note, if it was a business that provided a fair wage to those people or charged a fair price, you’ll find me again. For some that might seem obvious, but I know plenty that can not draw the distinction here. They pine for the doing something meaningful and demonize profits at all turns.

Let’s take a moment to look at the difference. Most of the things I have tried that have not worked out didn’t have a strong component of profit built-in or some alternate source of funding. Often, these failures boil down to a couple of different factors, a strong willingness to avoid the important questions or such a strong desire to not be an “evil” (read profitable) company. If you don’t make enough money to pay the bills, keep your employees happy and healthy, or whether a few storms. Then you do not make enough money.

I’ve gone a little far off of topic here and am almost out of time. What I want to get at here is that people who can take that experience and learn from it have turned a failure into an opportunity.  Those that charge on and scream damn the lack of profit, work harder, work longer, the customer is always right. Have the wrong kind of failure for success and they will eventually pay the price.

Spencer Heckathorn

I've been writing online on and off for nearly 20 years now. But I have been building online businesses and trying to figure out different ways to make money online consistently for 15 years. Recently you can find me writing on https://foodieresults.com and posting odd musings to Twitter @mrhobbeys. I also have a mailing list I'm passionate about growing because email and a personal website are better ways for people to do social media.

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