Learning by doing increases the chance of failure

Even as I type, I am unsure whether I should be sharing this.

There’s a little voice in my head telling me it will be damaging to my business if I do.

That I “should” always portray a sense of successfulness.  That being brutally honest about failure will make people less keen to work with me.

However, I also fundamentally believe that talking about failure is great and should be encouraged.  It is brave and a bit edgy. 

But only talk about failures that happened a while ago, right?  Maintain that current picture of success!

If I listen to my gut though, I know that little voice isn’t a helpful one.  And actually my story I’d like to share is one that isn’t shared often enough and it will be useful for some of you to hear.  So I’m going for it and diving right in.

In the past few weeks I’ve been promoting a retreat I’ve developed for female entrepreneurs.  It took a lot of thinking, some deep conversations and a good chunk of time in liaising with potential partners, the venue and building the sales pages.

People have responded really positively.  I’ve had lots emails from people saying that, for a whole variety of reasons, they can’t make it but love the idea of it and would love to come to one in the future.

But no one has booked.

It’s easy to label that as a big fat fail.

And in terms of sales targets, it totally is.  But I’ve learnt so much and it’s been a really good reminder that being a successful entrepreneur is a marathon not a sprint.

To explain how important that learning is, I need to go back in time a bit... well, a lot really.  A time before MySpace and Bebo in fact.

In my early twenties, I found myself in a rather fortunate position.  Through being in the right place, at the right time, with the right theatre skills and the right level of enthusiasm, I became the artistic director of the fabulous Toonspeak Young People’s Theatre.  This was not what I was expecting or had planned at the age of 23.  But it happened and I grasped that opportunity and ran with it.  We worked in some of Glasgow’s most disadvantaged areas and the hardest part of the job was getting young people through the door. 

There was no social media back then.  For the first couple of years, there wasn’t even a website.  The current mantra in marketing that you have to get in the face of a potential customer 27 times before they buy, didn’t really apply back then.  We would try something and if it worked we kept doing it. But if it didn’t work, we’d dump it and move on.  I’d love to say we’d always take the time to learn from the fails, but that wasn’t always the case.  Reflection was often a low priority when there were funding targets and outcomes to be met.

I’ve only recently realised that this way of working has created a few habits that I need to work hard on rewriting.

If I applied my Toonspeak approach of the early 2000s to my current situation, I’d delete the retreat off my website and move on with some other excellent, yet probably slightly head-first, whirlwind plan for another fabulous thing which may or may not succeed.

But that isn’t going to happen. 

I know, because wonderful women have told me, that the retreat is a fabulous thing which they would love to come to.  I also know that it’s expensive and we are in the middle of a cost of living crisis which has made everyone so much more cautious than before.

Also I know end of August isn’t the best time.

So I’m not going back to the drawing board and coming up with new ideas.  I’m taking this idea and shaping it so it can deliver what it should: a heart-felt, powerful experience for women who are bravely running their own business, freelancing or any of the many self-employed options in between.

I’m unapologetic for trying something and it not working.  I learn by doing, so I’m pleased I had the bravery to try and have learnt so much about what my next steps might be. 

Also, the more I lean into the fact that I'm an imperfectionist (the opposite of a perfectionist) the more I realise it's a superpower.  I'm genuinely OK about trying something out, even if it's not as polished as it can be, because I have absolute faith that what I can deliver will be transformational.

I might reschedule it for 2023, but I’m going to wait on how the cost of living crisis pans out in the autumn as I, like so many others, am holding my breath a bit around the looming 50% energy cost rise in October.  That is going to be painful.  I’m cautious around financial outlay right now, so will my potential customers.

But I also want to play with these ideas and test them out.  So there may well be some mini-retreat offerings.  Really striving to deliver what people need as recession looms: ways of making more money or ways of increasing well being. 

That’s essentially my business strategy going forward – offering services and products that are about wealth or health, because those areas will be what people will need in the coming months.  All with my usual creative twist and determination that I’ll do it my way, perfectly imperfect and willing to give it my best shot!

July 2022