Don't Be Afraid To Fail

Recently I have been looking back at my 20-year career in facial aesthetics (I know what you’re thinking, surely Harry hasn’t been in the business for over 20 years, he looks so young! – Thank you, Botox?!) When I first embarked upon facial aesthetics in 2002, I?failed.

After my initial training,?being supermotivated and wanting to eradicate every single line on all of my patients faces, I thought?I would turn the key to my clinic front door and the patients would come flooding in with their wrinkles, creases and folds. I thought that sticking a few posters up in the waiting room would lead to a flurry of new patients. I was a firm believer that if I build it, they will come. I thought that my clinical skills alone would attract patients to me. I didn’t need to market, I’m a medical professional, or so my ego told me. I know I can offer patients the best, so why wouldn’t they come to me?

Then, when I realised I needed to market, I still did it all wrong!

I thought that adding ‘facial aesthetics’ to my dental website would lead to the phone ringing off the hook. I thought paying a tonne of money to Google would lead me to dominate my local area.

How wrong was I? and what a lesson that was! In marketing, from any activity, you either get a result or a lesson. I received no result and the lesson I got was that I needed a different marketing strategy!

On that note, I started this written piece stating that I ‘failed’. I don’t like to use that word and now substitute it with ‘feedback’. I got instant feedback, that whatever I was doing wasn’t working, I needed to pivot.

I was so frustrated with my experience, that I didn’t renew my indemnity for facial aesthetics. I gave up. What a waste of time and money I thought. I was demoralised and truly believed that facial aesthetics would not work in my area or my clinic.

I then decided to reflect and see what my stumbling block was. There were many, and I would feel overwhelmed if I tried to tackle them all. I wanted to look at one main obstacle. I called it the domino effect. What was one skill that if I could master, would make the biggest difference to my business? What was that one main domino, which once pushed, would cause other dominos to fall into place?

For me, it was learning about marketing and I 'geeked' out on it, so much that it’s now my favourite topic to read and speak about.

So, what’s that one domino holding you back in your business? Tell me in the comments below!