Ironically, failure is an actual Law of Success.
In Napoleon Hill’s 1925 classic, there is an entire chapter dedicated to it.
I’m often reminded of this when I step out and try to accomplish something new and I fall flat on my face.
Take my recent email promotion for which you may have been on the receiving end.
I spent 8 hours one day and countless hours before that in study and preparation to put together ‘The Perfect Webinar’.
I invested an hour or 2 putting together a special bonus membership site with some of the most valuable sales and influence content I have in my library.
For 2 hours, I poured my heart into a computer camera doing the best job I could delivering my first ‘not so perfect’ webinar to the point that when I finished that night, I was totally exhausted.
I spent the next 2 days writing and sending emails – encouraging people to buy or join because I believe wholeheartedly in what we’re doing together in our community and I know our products are good and can help people.
The result?
Not 1 person joined.
Not 1 new customer.
Not a penny in commission.
What a failure!
Or was it?
Enter a super useful idea from the field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP.
It’s called “Another Outcome.”
This is a form of reframing a situation or experience so it can serve you rather than hold you back and works like this.
Often times we will set our goal and judge the success or failure of our endeavor solely on whether we reached our goal or not.
If we reach it – success and if not, failure.
The strategy of “Another Outcome” suggests that there were other benefits (or outcomes) that we probably succeeded at outside of the primary goal.
In my example,
- I got a great reminder that although home business comes with great rewards (like earning so much more than I could at a job) it also involves some risks, meaning I can put forth effort and if I don’t produce a sale, I don’t make money. That’s reality and it comes with the territory of entrepreneurship. If I’m not willing to accept the ‘downside’ with the ‘upside’, then really I shouldn’t be an entrepreneur.
- Being able to experience failure makes me so much more empathetic with those I’m endeavoring to lead because it knocks me off any sort of perceived high horse and places me right there in the trenches with everyone else.
- I worked through FEAR and did stepped out and did something I wanted to do and this while perhaps was not a monetary win, definitely for me, was a spiritual win.
- I learned something that didn’t work and so next time I can do something different.
- I got to practice my speaking skills.
- I got to practice my writing skills.
Do you see all of the things that can be used as “Other Outcomes” to help me realize that truly, even though the primary goal wasn’t achieved, I may have still come out on top?
This is an essential strategy and practice for anyone in entrepreneurship because failure IS a part of success.
If we don’t have good strategies for processing failure, it might be hard to stay in the game to win the results we’re after.
One simple way to remember this strategy that Napoleon Hill nailed decades ago is to remember famous quote.
“In every apparent setback, lies the seed of an equal or greater advantage.”
Learn to always ask…
“Where is the seed I’m supposed to find?”
“Where is the seed?”
Then, find it and grow!