Treat each new business initiative as a test
You won’t know what works until you try.
One of my favorite business podcasts is “How to Fail with Elizabeth Day.” In each episode, she normalizes failure on the path to success with guests from every walk of life.
She’s on Season 17. Clearly, if you’re a female founder and you’ve failed anywhere along the way, you’re in good company.
Why so many seasons and so many failures? Because the truth is nobody knows, with 100% certainty, what will work (and what won’t) until they try.
Here’s how to get comfortable with this more positive approach to failure.
_____
Treat everything as a test.
This is one of the core tenets I encourage my clients to put in place in their businesses (simplicity is another).
Adopting the "everything is a test” mindset takes the pressure off. It allows you to go out with your ideas, research, and best set of assumptions — to take considered action.
It allows you to turn failures into learning opportunities, incites innovation, and creates resilience. Three positive outcomes in my book.
_____
Turn failures into compost.
When you treat everything as a test, you reframe failure as learning. You know that not everything will go as planned. Some tests will fail, and that's okay.
Each time something doesn’t deliver your desired result, you gather valuable data and insight to use to make adjustments and try again.
Did a marketing campaign not yield the expected results? That’s a lesson in what doesn't resonate with your audience.
Did a new offering not meet your sales goal? That’s an opportunity to reassess the product-market fit.
When you begin to see what didn’t work as information, as a natural part of the testing process, failures lose their sting. Failures become opportunities for growth and improvement.
_____
Generate new ideas.
Innovation is born out of experimentation. When you treat everything as a test, you’re forced to get creative, to take risks, to think outside the box, to generate the new.
This is a good thing.
Ideally, when you test, you don’t want to just seek to validate your existing ideas, you also want to explore new possibilities. This attitude of exploration opens doors to new opportunities, ideas, and strategies that you might not otherwise have considered as options.
And it’s not just you as the business owner. If you’ve got a team, however small, by adopting and demonstrating a testing mindset, you encourage those team members to question, explore, and challenge the status quo. And it’s this kind of culture that fuels innovation and leads to groundbreaking ideas.
_____
Get back up.
I’ve been laid flat, more than once. But each time, after some “wound licking,” I’ve gotten back up. No doubt you’ve experienced the same.
For me, the failures that hurt the most were those where I’d overly invested (financially and emotionally) in the outcome. Where I’d lost the thread of the testing mindset.
And I’ve learned my lesson - and developed resilience in the process. Now, I set myself up for the best chance for success, but I don’t put everything on the line in terms of the results and do my best to detach myself from the outcome.
_____
The takeaway.
The goal is to understand that a failed test doesn’t define you or your business. It’s a course correction, an opportunity for creativity and refinement, a chance for a different outcome, perhaps better than the one you imagined.
This mindset prepares you to handle whatever comes your way. Whether it’s a global pandemic, a sudden market shift, or a personal setback.
With it, you learn to adapt, pivot, and keep moving forward. You become not just a resilient entrepreneur, but a resilient human.
______
If you’re holding back on taking action in your business —analysis paralysis — let’s talk.