Are You An Expert At Failing?

by Steven Wagenheim

Posted: 14 years ago 24 replies

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If not...you should be.

Why?

It's rare that somebody gets it right, right out of the gate.

Take autoresponders as an example.

When I gave it my first shot at using them, I failed miserably at choice
of service and creation of messages.

My service had a horrible delivery rate and my messages got almost no
click throughs

It took me a long time and many failures to get them down.

So if you're not failing, and failing a lot...at:

Salescopy
Autoresponders
Articles
PPC
Traffic Generation

Or whatever it is you're doing...then you're not getting closer to that
point where you're at an expert at failing and one step closer to success.

There are very few home runs on the first at bat.

So get out there and start failing big.

#expert #failing

bethrobinson 14 years ago

I'm a big fan of this concept even though I've never much liked the term "failing" (although I recently did it big and that took the edge off a little, sigh). I usually approach it from the other direction.

It's okay to start out by doing something okay and not perfect. It's more important to get started and get something done than to have it be right, even if it's not good enough to get you even one sale.

Every time I haven't made it, or failed at an approach I've tried, I've learned something important that I didn't from all the reading and courses and forum chatter.

This wasn't something that registered when I was 20. But I was 100% convinced by the time I hit 30. It's worth learning as soon as possible.
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Lou Diamond 14 years ago

Hello,
does anyone want to fail on purpose, do movie makers want to make a bad movie on purpose?
The point is to learn from your mistakes and to not keep repeating them.
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Something new soon.
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Bill Farnham 14 years ago

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

So get out there and start failing big.

Steven,

Change that to "get out there and start failing fast" and I'm wit cha 100%.

~Bill
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mikemcmillan 14 years ago

Results--I've got a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.

--Thomas Edison
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- JRCarson 14 years ago
  
  Good post.
  
  I just got done talking to my wife about this today...I said, "I need to start failing more, faster". She was like, "okaaaaaaaay?"
  
  But it makes sense!! You can never figure out anything without first trying it and watching it go COMPLETELY OPPOSITE of how you had it all figured out in your head.
  
  Of course, you have to take the failures as a learning experience and not a discouragement
  
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CDarklock 14 years ago

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

So if you're not failing, and failing a lot...

...you don't understand failure.

EVERYTHING YOU DO IS A FAILURE!

Every single thing you do, no matter how great it seems to have gone, COULD HAVE GONE BETTER.

If you don't know how, KEEP THINKING ABOUT IT UNTIL YOU FIGURE IT OUT.
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Dennis Gaskill 14 years ago

I tried to fail, but I just couldn't. Sorry. At this one thing, I have failed.

PS - What Steve says is true. You can't be afraid to fail. Things that don't work right are just learning bridges to success.
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Rod Cortez 14 years ago

I've been at this for quite some time now and I'm still failing; and I love it because the more I fail at something, the quicker I'm going to get my result, generally speaking of course.

Now I'm going to fail my way to another cup of my favorite Joe!

RoD "Coffee-Made-Me-Do-It-Again" Cortez
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- Daniel Soulsby 14 years ago
  
  Are You An Expert At Failing?
  
  Er, no, just an expert at wasting time on this forum at the moment haha
  
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Matt Bard 14 years ago

I'm with Bill on this one. Fail fast but try to keep them manageable.

Go into a project with a couple of plans for retreat and you can still be standing when the dust settles.
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sanssecret 14 years ago

Yup, I'm definitely an expert on this.

And if you want to know my secret it'll only cost $2000.

Good post, and one I'm still learning to come to terms with.
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André Silverspoon 14 years ago

if it's difficult to learn from others' failings, would it be harder learning lessons from our own? I hope it won't be that way.
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Jag82 14 years ago

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

If not...you should be.

Why?

It's rare that somebody gets it right, right out of the gate.

So true. Brian Tracy once said, "If you want to be successful,
be prepared to fail twice as much."

It's only through failures that we learn ways on how
NOT to do something, which will lead us closer to
our goals.

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

So get out there and start failing big.

I believe failing is unavoidable in our journey
to success. We must learn how to
embrace failures.

But...I won't encourage anyone to fail BIG!

It's always possible to fail small...cut loss quick..
get out...learn from the mistake...and plunge
back in with renewed wisdom until success is reached.

Many small failures won't kill as long as you have
several big successes to cover.

In stock investment - we say, "Cut your losses
short. Let your winners run."

If you let your losses run...it could turn out
to be extremely devastating...and it could be something
you might take a long time to recover from...or worst...
not even being able to recover!

Something to think about.

Best,
Jag
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Fernando Veloso 14 years ago

Didn't you failed just now posting in wrong forum?

:p
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- Steven Wagenheim 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso
  
  Didn't you failed just now posting in wrong forum?
  
  :p
  
  I didn't post it here. It was moved here because I'm not allowed to post
  things in Main Discussion.
  
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  Fernando Veloso 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim
  
  I didn't post it here. It was moved here because I'm not allowed to post
  things in Main Discussion.
  
  Sorry to hear it Steven. Seems something I don't understand is going on.
  
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  People make good money selling to the rich. But the rich got rich selling to the masses.
  
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Cataclysm1987 14 years ago

They say an expert is a man who has made every possible mistake in a particularly narrow field.

I'm becoming successful slowly and gradually, but am sure making a lot of mistakes even to this day.

Can't be afraid of them.
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imseo Banned 14 years ago

Is this thread in the right section? I thought this forum was for product reviews/ratings??
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pearsonbrown 14 years ago

It got moved here from the main forum. In error, I think.

As a very junior mod, I have no powers to move it back again.

Pearson
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- Steven Wagenheim 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by pearsonbrown
  
  It got moved here from the main forum. In error, I think.
  
  As a very junior mod, I have no powers to move it back again.
  
  Pearson
  
  It was no error. If I post something in Main Discussion, it will get moved
  somewhere.
  
  That's why I start very few threads anymore. No point to it.
  
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  My Soundcloud Music Channel
  
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nordend 14 years ago

I always found that failin is part of a creative process. As a photographer I always took hundreds of failed pictures. It is not that failing makes you go forward. You need to have a critical look at your failure to find the ones that are BRILLIANT. Failing has always been an evolutionary process. In marketing you can replace failure by testing, but trying radically different things can bring out radical failure OR success, but it is very important at the end of the day to go back to your failures, and look which of them has the germs of becoming a huge succes.
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Chris Hunter 14 years ago

What?

What do you mean you can't post in the Main Discussion forum?

Why?
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Ok, sure. You can follow me on Twitter - http://twitter.com/Chris_Hunter ;)
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- Steven Wagenheim 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Chris Hunter
  
  What?
  
  What do you mean you can't post in the Main Discussion forum?
  
  Why?
  
  Whatever I post there gets moved. It's just the way it is. I've stopped
  caring about it because it's just not important enough to get upset about
  anymore. Most of the time I just limit my activities to either posting in
  Off Topic or replying to the threads of other members.
  
  Only reason I started this thread was because of something I saw on TV
  that made me think of this very thing.
  
  But it's not important.
  
  Oddly, it's probably getting more views and responses here than it would
  have gotten in Main Discussion anyway.
  
  In fact, when I first posted it, It was almost off of page 1 with no
  responses at all.
  
  Anyway, like I said, it's not important enough to get upset about and
  the only reason I even brought this up was because the question was
  asked why this was here...so I'm explaining why.
  
  It's where my threads usually end up.
  
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pearsonbrown 14 years ago

Well it's a pleasure to have a poster of your quality here, Steven. Even if it's the result of a mistake ;-)

Pearson
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