What Do You Choose To Do When You Fail?

“Failure is nothing more than a chance to revise your strategy”
— anonymous

Failure is not necessarily a bad thing — sure, at the moment when the sh** hits the fan, it’s never a fun experience, but it’s all about what you choose to do with said failure. You can choose to try again using the same formula, tools and approach which will only lead to another failure — or you can take your time to analyse the reasons why. What could have been done differently? Did you put enough effort into it? Did you focus on the wrong things? Did you miss something concerning the needs of your target audience?

Take your time — after you’ve licked your wounds properly and analysed every tiny detail of your failure, learn, reflect, and try again, but this time based on your new insight and learnings. Data is information that needs to be processed and transformed into valuable insight. Each failure will help you hone in and ultimately improve and create the success you desire.

Take the guys that founded Airbnb — they tried 3 times to kick off the platform, but their failures and persistence made it in the end, and today Airbnb is the biggest provider of beds in the world and that journey started with them starting to create cereal boxes that were red or blue for the political parties in the US back in 2008. Because they took the time to analyse their failings, iterate, improve and fight through their failures, they managed to improve their strategy and make something remarkable.

A failure is only as bad as your efforts and persistence. If you are not willing to change, adapt, listen and revise your strategy, you will for certain fail. But by learning and making the effort to change, you might make it, and make it real good.