The Insider's Guide to Failure

I've written a fair amount about failure. I am a failure in a lot of ways. I did awful in school, started and failed 3 business by the time I was 25, and some might say my hygiene routine is a failure. That one I disagree with. You guys are just taking too many showers. 

All of my failures in life have brought me to where I am now. I've let people down, felt terrible about it, and changed the way I do things going forward. I have no shame about failing anymore. I'm not worried that someone is going to look at me and think, "what a failure." They don't know me. True failures stop. They stop trying doing thinking acting, moving breathing. Yeah, that's right, I'm calling you out dead people. Honestly, I'm not because they did succeed at dying, so there's that. 

As the title implies, I'm your insider guide. I know what I'm talking about. I know what it feels like to put a massive amount of effort into something only to see it come crumbling down. It's not fun, but it's a good feeling. It's good because you know what you did or didn't do, what you should've started earlier, what you thought wasn't a big deal that turned out to be a giant chimpanzee in a dress yelling at all your customers to go away. But now. Now you know. 

It's about improvement. Getting better. Take failure head-on; don't hide from it or feel shame or guilt about it. You are learning. I'm learning. No one has it figured out ultimately. So take an opportunity to learn from it. Grow like a tree in a rainstorm and anchor your roots deeper into the ground, so you don't fall over and truly FAIL. 

Yes, some things are out of our control. Business partners steal, spouses cheat, pandemics hit, but if you can be the one to take a step back, access the situation, take a breath and start moving again. And if you don't know how to do that, I've got you. 

Let's say…

When the pandemic hit, you lost your job and decided to start your own company. You figured that you're gonna kill it. You managed teams and had super productive outputs for your old boss. And maybe that works pretty well for a while because you are excited, and you wanted to really bust your ass and crush it. Then things start falling apart. No jobs are coming in, and your productivity has tanked deeper and deeper into the never ending bucket of failure. You suck. Everyone hates you. Your family is on their last bag of rice and beans, and it's your fault. Sounds pretty miserable right? It is. And it's your fault. 

The answer, my friend, is OODA Loop. For those non-military brats out there, OODA Loop is the cycle observe–orient–decide–act. It's also fun to say. Try it out loud. OODA LOOP. Nice! You sound great. Just kidding, I know you didn't read it out-loud, LAME. Anyway, let's continue.

Observe. 

You are in the fifth circle of hell, and no one cares about you. You are a loser, and no one wants to be around you. You also smell bad for some reason. You kinda hate yourself and feel like maybe you should call up your old boss to beg for your job back. What led to your fifth circle experience? 

You lost steam and let other things creep in and take over your desires to be the best in your field. Like you watched all of youtube. ALL OF IT. That's some hardcore procrastination. Maybe you also weren't doing the things that were the most useful things to be doing. OH, and you also thought you don't really need a schedule because it's just you, and how hard would it be to keep track of the stuff that needed to get done. After all, you managed a larger team and did that well. You're failing—step one complete. 

Orient.

Where is true north? You pull out your compass and point it north. Also known as soul searching for the reasons you started this thing you have and what your options are to get back on track. You can think about past experiences, maybe when you worked for someone else. What worked for you then when the productivity of your team dipped? Write it all down. When you write them down, you are disassociating, and that gives you perspective. It's pretty hard to look objectively at a thought in your head. Trust me, I am your guide, after all. All your options and solutions are now down on a piece of paper—time to bring in that D. 

Decide. 

Take what you have on paper and make a game plan. An objective game plan, not some half-ass idea you threw together in 10mins. The bigger the problem, the longer you should reflect. I mean, unless if it's like a life or death situation, then you should make whatever decision gets you away from the bad man with the knife the quickest. But that not you. You're sitting at your kitchen table with some excellent cabernet sauvignon. 

Act. 

This one is pretty much the easiest to explain. You just do the thing you wrote down as a plan. It's easy to explain and hard to do sometimes, but you're turning over a new leaf. You're a rockstar. Better than that, actually. You're an entrepreneur, an OODA looping entrepreneur! 

When life throws a giant ball of shit at you or you throw it on your self, learn from it, analyze how it happened, and move forward. ALWAYS MOVE FORWARD, even if it's a crawl. 

Now go have a HAPPY NEW YEAR!