How to Handle Failure

I was having coffee with a fellow business owner last week, and he was beating himself up big time.  He had recently made a big investment in his business on an initiative he was 100% certain would kick off and return.  However, it didn’t.  He lost a lot of money, lost a lot of momentum, and lost a lot of confidence in himself.

He was living it again for me while we sipped coffee, calling attention to all of his errors and punishing himself for them.  As our chat went on, his condition grew worse and worse, and he kept going around and around in a state of hopelessness.

I gave him some leeway to keep on, and I did so for a purpose. I questioned him about his feelings, his level of energy, and his excitement about starting his firm again after he had done sulking in his defeat.  He hung his head and muttered, “Not at all.”

We then had a discussion about focus and what you focus on in life, leadership and business when things go well, and also go not so well.  He realized he was focusing on the defeat, the missed opportunity, the wrong decisions, and not the lessons learned,  the way this failure actually made him stronger and more resilient, and most importantly, what he was going to do about it moving forward.

In life, leadership, and small business, you will fail.  You will miss the mark.  You will make the wrong call. You will say the wrong thing.  This week, I would like to share some encouragement and practical tips about what to do when this happens. 

I have failed many times in my journey as a small business leader.  Here is what I found:

  • Pay attention to the lesson that the failure held. There is a valuable lesson to be learned from every setback.  Only if you put in the effort will you find it.
  • Abandon self-comparison with others. After I fail, I frequently contrast my current circumstances with those of someone else who is succeeding.  I then start to feel worse about my circumstances and myself.  Comparing oneself to others is never a smart idea, especially when you are failing.
  • Seek assistance, wisdom, and counsel. The exact experience you are having has been had by several other small business owners.  The majority are eager to provide their tips on how they handled the circumstance.
  • Be careful who you seek advice from. Some people are not wired with the mindset to embrace failure.  To them, failure is the first excuse and reason to quit something.  Do not let these ideas rub off on you.
  • Debrief on your failure. Seek to understand how and why the failure occurred so it is less likely to happen again in the future.
  • Create an action plan moving forward. It is important after a failure to debrief, and from that debrief create an action plan to move ahead.  You may need to make some small adjustments to your plan.  You may require a total overhaul.  Point is, go back to the drawing board, make a plan, and take action again.
  • Remember, other entrepreneurs and leaders are also going through and experiencing failure. Anyone who tells you otherwise is not being 100% honest with you.

Keep driving forward with your business and leadership journey and embrace failure as an event filled with lessons to grow and develop you. 

For more free tools on how to grow your business and advance your leadership, click here.

what you can read next

Can You Unplug?

November 30, 2023 No Comments

One of the most magical moments of the Hike of a Lifetime on the Camino de Santiago was the fact that we completely unplugged from

Read More »
Matt’s Blog & Vlog
Check it out
Facebook Instagram Tiktok Youtube

Copyright © 2022 All Rights Reserved | Website Designed By Imprint Digital