Accepting Failure VS Expecting Failure

You know, the thing about entrepreneurship is that every day there is this vulnerability to failure. Startups are a really uncomfortable place, because you’re constantly doing things you’ve never done before.

If you were sitting down at a job interview and someone asked you, “What are your qualifications for this position,” they’re basically saying, “Have you done this job before?” They’re basically asking if you’ve done the necessary things to be able to do the necessary things. In the startup world and in the entrepreneurial world, you just don’t have that luxury. You never have that luxury.

You’re going to be asked to do things you’ve never done. You’re going to be asked to turn theory into reality, because what you’re doing is taking a dream and a vision and a concept, and you’re creating a business out of it. You’re approaching a problem, and you’re disrupting the status quo for a new solution. And you know what? Those are tracks that haven’t been made. Those are roads that haven’t been paved. You’re doing things that haven’t been done.

Now, obviously, everyone has competitors, but everyone in small and emerging tech markets are doing things differently because there is no status quo. No one is “qualified” to do something that hasn’t been done. I digress.

I want to look at the difference between a culture that accepts failure, and a culture that expects failure. One can lead to the other, but one is particularly damning.

Accepting failure. What does that look like? It looks like this. “Hey James, I need you to figure out a way to do an effective A/B to nail down what demographics we best connect with on Facebook. Here’s a $50 budget. We just want some basic insights. Could you go do some testing?”

I go. I do. 50 bucks runs out and nothing conclusive is achieved. I really have no greater insight. I don’t know if it was my content or my copy or if I didn’t differentiate enough between my A/B in what I was trying to articulate. If the goal was to find a definitive answer, I failed.

Now, accepting failure is me saying “guess what, that happened, fine.” On to the next. On to the next, because I know failure’s going to happen. I know it’s part of the game. I accept that. I accept that I will fail multiple times, in finding the solution, and that’s the biggest thing. You’re not accepting failure as an end goal, you’re accepting that failure is needed to reach the goal.

Then you have the other side, which is expecting failure. Now, let me tell you what I think this is bred from, where I’ve seen this. It’s bred from a healthy culture of accepting failure. A healthy culture that say’s we accept failures in our efforts to achieve our greater goals – we accept it. BUT. Then the failures don’t stop. You keep coming up short. You come up short time and time again, and that accepting failure mentality turns into an expecting failure mentality. And when you expect failure, you are absolutely going to achieve it.

One of my favorite quotes of all time, I can’t exhaust this enough. “The person who say’s he can and the person who say’s he can’t are both correct.” When you are accepting failure, there is this tendency to then expect failure. This is DANGEROUS. When you accept failure, you accept that it is part of your journey towards THE goal, not your end. But when you’re expecting failure, good heavens, that becomes your undoing! It will destroy your attitude.

(Let me interject, some of you might say, “expecting failure, better prepares you to accept it when it comes.” 

This mindset will keep you from fully committing and pushing a directive to its max. You’ll start calling things short of their potential.)

Accepting failure is fine, but how do you accept failure in a healthy way and not become someone who expects failure? You have got to celebrate the little things. You have GOT to celebrate the little things. You have got to CELEBRATE the little things.

Yes, you worked 6 months on the enterprise account and couldn’t close it. Yes, you put thousands into a marketing effort that had high projections and fell on it’s face. Yes, you’ve let your sales funnel look more like a colander. These are failures. These are failures that are tough to accept. But you know what happened along the way?

There were a lot of small victories. There were content pieces picked up by major media groups. There were sales that occurred, relationships started – good things happened! So how do you avoid expecting failure? You gotta be reminded that every step forward is a step towards success! You can’t get so blinded by your BIG goals that are going to change the world that you forget the little things that are going right. Look at your day, today. Accept the failures that come and celebrate your victories.