Here's What It Looks Like to Truly Learn From Your Mistakes

How to Really Learn From Your Mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes. Even—or maybe especially—business leaders. Successful people aren’t infallible; they just know how to quickly move on from their failures.

But you already know this. There’s a good reason “learn from your mistakes” is a motto that nearly every entrepreneur lives by (myself included).

I want to take this advice a step further and show you what it looks like in practice. My hope is that by sharing with you how my company corrected its course after a major mistake, I can offer you some tools to do the same in your own business (or life, for that matter).

The Mistake

Early on, when my healthful beverage company, hint water, was a barely known brand, getting our flavored water into a major retailer was our biggest goal. So when we were approached by one of our favorite stores, we were ready to do whatever it took to make the deal happen.

Although the retailer was excited about what we were doing, they were worried that the category of “flavored unsweetened water” wasn’t big enough, so they asked us to make a private label brand for them. If we could start with that for a few months, they said, they’d feel good about putting hint water on the shelves.

We knew we weren’t in the private label business; we were trying to build a brand. But we decided to make an exception to get our product on this store’s shelves. We figured it was a short diversion on our long path to success.

So we created a private label product, and it did spectacularly. After three months, we were thrilled for our product to join the pack, but the retailer said they weren’t quite ready to stock hint water. A few more months went by, and the retailer still said they weren’t ready.

Before we knew it, a year had passed, and we felt no closer to getting hint water on this store’s shelves, yet we were investing valuable time and energy into the private label business.

The Recovery

My team was obviously frustrated, and as the leader, I had to figure out how to move us forward. Here are the steps I took to recover and keep something like this from happening again.

Step 1: Determine if this is, in fact, a mistake or just a different way of approaching success.

It’s not like we weren’t making money. On the contrary: We were making nearly half our profit from the private label business. From an outside perspective, this looked like a huge win.

We sat down as a team and had a long discussion about our company values and goals. Was getting healthier products into the hands of consumers enough, no matter how we did it? Were we happy with whatever approach allowed us to make payroll? Or did we want to grow our brand the way we had originally envisioned it?

Ultimately, we decided that we were in it to build our brand, which meant that putting so much into the private label project was a mistake for us. A different team could have decided to continue down the private label path, making this a happy accident instead of a mistake. When things don’t go as you plan, it’s up to you and your team to decide what’s best for your business.

Step 2: Be willing to cut your losses.

We went back to the retailer and told them that they needed to put hint water in stores; otherwise, we would stop the private label program. We were shocked and upset when they told us they weren’t going to put our brand in at all, and they only wanted to do private label moving forward.

Since we were selling millions of dollars of product with them, they assumed we wouldn’t walk away. But we did.

Initially, it was really tough. We lost a lot of income. The retailer found another supplier to make private label products, which weren’t as good, so the store, eventually, killed off the category. It seemed like everyone ended up worse off. As a leader, I found it hard to watch.

But, sometimes, things must get worse before they get better. To move forward and get closer to our true goals, I knew we had to be willing to cut our losses.

Step 3: Stick to your guns and trust it will all work out.

We concentrated on building our brand and didn’t let anything distract us from that goal. We sold our product through our own channels or smaller retailers who understood our vision. We gave our brand a personality that made people fall in love with our product.

It took us a little longer to get where we wanted to be, but by not compromising our mission, we built up the dedicated following we felt our brand deserved.

In the end, our customer loyalty grabbed the attention of that major retailer that we had done business with, and years later, we got hint water onto their shelves—no private label necessary.

?Have you heard? You can now find me on Twitter. Let’s connect! DM me and I'll make sure to reply as soon as possible. Follow me @KaraGoldin.

Kara Goldin is the founder and CEO of San Francisco–based hint?, a healthy lifestyle brand that produces the leading unsweetened flavored water and a scented sunscreen spray that’s oxybenzone and paraben-free. Listen to her podcast, Unstoppable, where she interviews founders, entrepreneurs, and disruptors across various industries and keep up with her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.