I failed today - and I'm so grateful!

Have you ever failed?

Tried something new...

...tested out a great idea...

...contacted someone you were sure would love your new product – and it didn’t go according to plan?

I had that very situation today.

I had this great idea to help some of the women I’m currently mentoring who haven’t quite got off the ground with their business yet.

If you’re new to business then it’s important to celebrate all the small successes along the way. It’s a steep learning curve in the early days, so taking time out to recognize your achievements and growth are important to keep you motivated and moving forward. Seeing a line of successes behind you can also help you on those days when things don’t go your way.

Entrepreneurship can be a tough - it's important to celebrate every small success along the way!

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With this in mind, I created a mentoring group that could help everyone in my ‘slow and steady’ group to take a series of structured, small steps together, that would deliver them to their first milestone.

By taking these steps together, they could encourage and learn from each other, and celebrate each other’s wins. Thus motivating them on to their next milestone.
I was so happy with this plan. I created the group, I developed some nice training, I supported this with live videos…I was so excited!

Sadly, no one else was! Despite saying that they were excited about taking part in the group, not a single one engaged in the training or followed any of the tips or suggested tasks. Not one!

So today, after three months of continuous effort to try and support and motivate this group of women entrepreneurs, I decided enough is enough and I closed the group down.

I’m always disappointed when someone doesn’t achieve the success I can see they are capable of. But from this I learned some very valuable lessons:

• It’s not enough for me to want success for someone, they have to want it too!
  My vision of their success is useless, unless they see it, and are moved by it, too.

• Giving people knowledge is not enough, they have to be willing to act on that knowledge and move forward.
  As Tony Robbins always says, "Knowledge isn't power, it's only potential power. Action is power!"

• And what people say and what they do are two very different things.
  I should remember that from my Marketing days!

What people say and what they do are two very different things!

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What could I have done differently?

Probably not much. If people are not ready or willing to take the required steps to secure success in their own business, then that is out of my control.

There is probably some work I could do to help work on their mindset, and I’ll put that as a future project as for now I need to refocus on those people I’m working with that are eager for success and working hard to achieve it – they deserve that.

Where am I going with this?

Well, the thing is, the life of an entrepreneur never runs smoothly. You never know what challenges or opportunities lie around the corner.

The important thing is to openly embrace everything that comes your way, the good and the bad.

Push your boundaries every day and test out all your new ideas - if they work, that’s wonderful! If they don’t then that’s wonderful too – we learn more from our failures that we ever do from things that go right first time. So let’s embrace that.

Don’t let the fear of failure hold you back.
Instead, let it be the fuel that moves you forward!

Don't let fear hold you back. Let it be the fuel that moves you forward!

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The next time things don’t go according to plan; the next time you fail, just say “Fascinating!”. Then think deeply about why it didn’t work to ensure you take away as many lessons from that experience as you can, and then move on.

In my freelance career, I learned that no efforts are ever wasted. You always learn, and most of the time the things you have created that didn’t work at the time, can be repurposed at a later date and will work perfectly in a different situation.

So, what has got you saying “Fascinating!” recently?

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