Failure Sucks ... And is Awesome

The company I founded and helped build was doing great. Growing every year and staying true to its core mission: we were empowering more than 500 local moms to build hyper-local media empires in their own communities and sharing content each and every week that genuinely made families’ lives better. Our advertisers, who were the clients who kept the lights on and the engine going, were happy. 

Things were good. But they weren’t good enough. We had 500 local affiliates but there were millions more moms, many of whom had taken a step away from their careers when they had kids but who still had energy and creativity and who wanted to contribute and grow and give back and learn new skills and help provide for their families. And my mission, my goal, my dream, which I scribbled in the notebook where I write down my dreams and my goals, answered the question “who do I want to be” in this way:

A leader of women who seeks to make the world a better place by inspiring them and by giving them the tools to become their best self.

Helping 500 women develop skills, giving them tools and fostering a community of support was awesome. But it wasn’t enough. I was ready to try something new.

Coffee. Lots of women drink coffee. We would create a company that empowered women to sell amazing quality coffee on a subscription basis. That makes sense: women drink a lot of coffee and a subscription means you don’t have to go to the store to get it, which lets your customers cross one thing off their list.

We sourced the BEST coffee. Truly. We created an amazing brand identity. 

And we failed. Hard.

Next? Accessories. We stumbled upon a factory that made handbags and backpacks out of gorgeous, supple rubber (I promise, they were much cooler than they sound). But in the sourcing process, we got pulled off course and released a line of shoes and bracelets. Shoes and bracelets? What were we thinking? Failure number two.

And there were others. So many projects we tried that didn’t work as planned. Macaroni TV, Macaroni Tribes, Macaroni Live. We bought a small company that failed. We hosted events that no one came to. The list goes on.

Last year, we moved our offices from the place we had been in for more than a decade, a space that was bright and open and had a 2,000 square foot basement that we had filled. In order to move, we needed to purge that entire basement. It was a walk through failed projects and I remember standing at the door of the basement, looking at everything that had to be sorted, given away, sold or tossed. In one corner, boxes of documents from legal cases I had worked on more than a decade before. In the middle of the floor, boxes of shoes and bracelets from our failed accessories company. Against the far wall, cases of packaging from our failed coffee company. In a back corner, the green screen and lights for the “studio” we had set up to record the videos for Macaroni TV. And in the right-hand corner, everything one would need to put on an incredible live event … that no one would come to.

Cleaning that basement was devastating. It was a two-week journey picking through all of my failed projects and bad ideas.

Failure sucks.

But.

The only way you will discover what works is by trying it. It is impossible to know with certainty that something is going to be successful until you do the work and bring it to life. You will only grow and learn if you are willing to try things that you haven’t tried before. If you push outside your comfort zone and take risks. 

There are three things that make it possible to go from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

First, you must understand that just because a project failed, you are not a failure. You tried something that didn’t work. That project failed. But you can not let failure define you. That failed but you are not a failure. Words are important, so say “that didn’t work out as planned” and never say “I am a failure.” Life is long. There will be other projects, other opportunities.

Second, you must remember that just because something you tried failed doesn't mean that the next thing you try will fail. We learn and grow every day. Every failure and every setback teaches us lessons and makes us stronger and wiser. The next thing might fail, but it might not. Or the thing after that. 

And that leads to number three: you must learn from your failures. Sometimes that takes some time. You might need a little distance from the failure to give yourself the objectivity needed to identify the causes of the failure. It is easy to close the door on projects that didn’t work. Examining them is painful, trust me, I know. But examining them is essential. Where were your faulty assumptions? Did you ignore your gut, do too little research or quit too soon?

Try. Fail. Examine. Learn. Grow. Repeat.