Want to achieve success faster? You likely need to FAIL faster!
You may be thinking: "Is Marcy CRAZY? Shouldn’t I be SUCCEEDING faster, not FAILING faster?!"
In the ideal world, yes, you could succeed without failing. In the real world in which you and I live, however, no person can make a continuous series of perfectly right decisions without making some wrong ones along the way.
“Good judgment is the product of experience, and experience is the product of bad judgment.” Saying among backcountry skiiers.
For example, much of your good judgment in your personal life may come from poor judgment you demonstrated as a teen.
Lots of my clients are perfectionists and they like following rules. Both of those traits make it hard to view failing as a key component to success.
Failure and success are intertwined. One does not exist without the other.
You cannot make perfect decisions. You are human and therefore imperfect.
That means you’re going to make some great decisions, some mediocre decisions, and some poor decisions.
The more quickly you decide which decisions are poor, mediocre and great – the faster you can decide which ones to stick with, which ones to tweak, and which ones to abandon.
Fast and imperfect action will beat slow and perfect action just about every time. Because faster decision-making plus faster analysis of your decision-making will lead you to better results than paralysis by analysis will.
Here’s an example. Your goal is to move from $0 (you’re just starting out) to $10K in sales in 4 months. You have 3 possible ways to start sales in your new company. All 3 strategies sound good in theory and each of them has worked for other people.
Here are two scenarios:
Scenario A. You spend a LOT of time debating which of the 3 sales strategies is best. Given that they’ve all worked for other people in the past and seem feasible for you, you have no way of deciding amongst them. It’s very important for you to make the BEST possible decision, so you keep going over the same pros and cons in your mind. You “analyze” for 3 months, then in month 4, you pick one sales strategy and try it out.
Scenario B. Given that all 3 strategies seem equally good, you decide to implement all 3 of them right off. After one month, you realize that one strategy is totally NOT working out and the other 2 strategies have created moderate sales of about $1K each.
You drop the loser strategy and focus on the 2 sales strategies which gave you moderate returns. You analyze them, realize that you can tweak each of them to make them more effective, and re-start them. In month 2, each one earns you $2K/month. You get busy with other parts of your business and decide to just keep doing these 2 strategies, without tweaking them any further.
Scenario B earned money IMMEDIATELY, unlike Scenario A. Over time it earned much MORE money than did Scenario A.
• Scenario A included lots of analysis, mental debate and self-questioning. And it generated very little sales.
• Scenario B featured immediate action on all the strategies and included time to change and improve the mediocre ideas.
How does this apply to you and your business?
What kinds of results are you experiencing in your business?
If your results are not what you want, then consider: What issue do you need to make some decisions about? What is your decision-making speed?
Quite likely, you can quickly get better results just by making a decision NOW and allowing yourself the luxury of being OK with that decision being bad, mediocre, or great. When you have the confidence that you can modify any decision and make it better, you’ll be more relaxed about making decisions.
As a business-owner, you will be more successful when you develop the habit of making MORE decisions, AND allow time for tweaking and re-making them. That’s one key ingredient for business success!
Marcy Stahl’s passion is helping women direct sellers and solopreneurs achieve the successful lifestyle they want. She knows that the top entrepreneurs have the top mindsets. Her mission is to help every entrepreneur develop a profitable and abundant mindset.
Marcy is a serial entrepreneur. Previously, she co-founded and managed a government contracting firm that earned over $1M in annual revenues. She holds a B.S. with honors and M.S. in Computer Science from George Mason University. Prior to coaching, she spent 21 years in the corporate world in technology.
She is the co-author of Direct Selling Power. Marcy is an Area Chapter Coordinator with the Direct Selling Women’s Alliance (DSWA) and a member of the Direct Selling Women’s Speaker Bureau. She’s currently in coaching school for direct sellers.
Post new comment
Please Register or Login to post new comment.