General Business Strategy

Don’t Forget to Fail

Many a business person has been inspired by the story of Spanx founder, Sara Blakely [1]. After-all, she IS a self-made billionaire whose passion and perseverance have chiseled out one of the most successful businesses of our time. Who could deny being inspired by that?

Personally, I know many friends and colleagues who have worked to learn from and mimic her actions in an effort to foster their own business success (myself included). However, after reading a recent interview with Ms. Blakely [2], I realized there was one foundational milestone that many of us have been overlooking in this quest.

Failure.

In the interview, Sara Blakely tells us that, “When I was growing up my father would ask me, ‘What have you failed at this week?’ His lesson was that trying was just as important as the outcome. Not trying something was failure.”

The effect of this practice? Blakely tells us “It allowed me to be freer in trying things in life and to embrace failure as part of a growing process.”; a mindset that allowed her to try to make a business out of pantyhose with the legs cut off, instead of stopping before she got started due to a fear of failure.

I believe it is this mindset which is the cornerstone to all the other steps along her journey, yet so many of us overlook it. Instead, we define failure as an unfavorable outcome to some event, and look to avoid it at all costs.

Our main method of avoidance? Not trying at all.

The irony is that this avoidance tactic is not only not helpful, but it is the surest way to stifle any innovation.

*Photo by Kristopher Roller

Sources

1.  Wikipedia. Sara Blakely. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org

2. Schreiber, G. Sara Blakely: The Spanx Billionaire Who Thrived On Failure. Retrieved from http://real-leaders.com