FALL Failures V.40

40 Falls of Failure – a convoluted look at a lifetime of learning.

This is my 40th September (Fall) in the workforce and I am writing this memo to become an influencer. To be clear, I think calling yourself an “influencer” is rather arrogant, my goal here is merely to influence my current self and set a bar for my future self, the self a few years down the road before I hang it up and go sit on the beach with my wife Kim.

I am at an age where virtually all of my friends are retired and where professionally, people years younger than me are considered professionally “old”. I have been “advised” that people my age are slowing down. I refuse to buy in to this because I am more driven than I have ever been to win. My motor may have lost a cylinder but my engine is always on.

Over the last 40 Falls I have been… (among hopefully some other things) myopic, self-righteous, judgmental, frustrated, frustrating, confused and confusing but always driven. I have always worked my ass off everywhere I have been and tried hard to learn from every mistake. I constantly feed my head through podcasts and webinars but I literally learn by making mistakes.

I have always thought that when someone pays you to do a job that you are a “professional” so you owe them your absolute best. When I was 15, I worked in a pizza store and I remember the owner saying to me “you act like you own the place” and I remember saying to him “that’s the idea, right?”.

Working like an owner has been the way I have approached my job for the last 40 Falls. In retrospect, and to be clear, not everyone loves an “ownership mindset” sometimes I drive too hard and org-charts have rarely mattered to me. From my perspective, owners are responsible for outcomes. If you are an owner you owe it to your team and your clients to do your absolute best and get the job done.

I have tried to learn from all of my mistakes which in theory should make me highly educated, if not Doctoral in my knowledge base. I literally hate making mistakes but every failure to me is fuel and just another ring on the tree that creates an indelible impression to “do it better next time”.

I have never been afraid to fail because as many have said before, if you aren’t failing you aren’t trying hard enough. If mistakes are high octane fuel for learning why are so many people afraid to make them?

Professionally I have always been driven by winning. I could care less about winning a card game but when it comes down to business, winning and being the best matter greatly. Quite simply, when you are professional you owe it to everyone to do your absolute best, leave nothing on the table and get the job done. You have to swing and occasionally miss because strikeouts are a part of the game, they literally prepare you for he next at bat.

As I enter the last few years of my work life, my goal is clear and winning to me is building the absolute best and most trusted company in our space.

Our bar will be very high, we will be absolutely relentless in becoming the trusted digital partner of the most driven ad agencies in the world. Everyone cannot be great or everyone would be, there is a lot that goes into it. We will undoubtedly lose a few team members that do not share the drive and passion needed to become great but we will continue to build the very best team in our space. We will also lose some agencies that do not share our drive or business ethics but ultimately, we will help the industry re imagine and redefine the bar for what a white label provider is.

We are investing in our future, in; infrastructure, technology, tools, driven & passionate people and engaging with the most enlightened advisors in our industry to help us achieve our goals. We will continue to elevate the area of white label digital through innovation, hard work, extreme ethics and dedication to delivery and to our clients.

Over the next four or five years we may or may not achieve all of our company goals but we will pursue them relentlessly and leave virtually nothing on the table to become the most trusted company in our space. We will occasionally fail along the way but we will learn and grow from it.

Failure is not defeat, it is education. I am confident our goals will be achieved because 40 Falls of Failure have afforded the knowledge and resilience needed to win. #relentless #failureislearning #agencylife #conduitdigital