Failure: The Gateway to Success

By: Abby Kiesner, Marketing Administrator
Published: July 22, 2019

What does Dr. Suess, Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, Michael Jordan, and Oprah Winfrey all have in common?

They have all failed multiple times to get where they are now. All 5 of these people have had to deal with rejection, struggles, and repeatedly hearing the dreaded two-letter word: NO. So how did they get to where they are now? Their successes are accredited to persistence and not accepting failure.

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill

“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
-Michael jordan

Failure is inevitable. We fail all the time.
This past week, I attempted to fix an error on one of our website forms. Something I thought was a harmless, simple fix, resulted in an abundance of broken links and potential loss of leads. Once I realized the page was glitching, I spoke with my boss and asked him to take a peek. Little did I know, my effort in solving a simple problem only caused a bigger one. The edit I made meant that all ads pointing to their web page would no longer go through. My one little mistake cost us money in broken ad links, more importantly, it put a hold on our main objective: to generate leads for our members (Mind you this at 5pm right before we were about to head home for the day). Granted, this simple mistake of mine was only went undiscovered for a day, so the results could have been much worse.

Failure just means you’re on the right track to success.

After my boss explained to me what I had done and domino effect that followed, I was determined to fix my unforeseen failure. After my first few attempts at correcting these forms, I realized nothing I was doing was working, I thought I was going to have to rebuild all of their pages and get the help of my coworkers to add pixels, connect the responses to the correct spreadsheets, and set up the right links for the ads (This is no easy task, it takes about 2 full days of work to complete). Our client would not have received any leads during this time either.

How You Respond to Failure Determines Your Success
Failure gives us the best chance at success.
We have the opportunity to correct and better understand those mistakes so they don’t happen again.

Failure = Opportunity
My failure triggered a motivation to get everything fixed back up and running before I went home for the day. In this failure, came an opportunity: to search for a new way to solve the situation at hand. After some time and retracing my steps, I was able to correct the pages without having to rebuild them all. I also learned more about how our software system works and how to handle these types of problems in the future.

Taking action immediately after failure, makes achieving success a little easier. These difficulties are there for us to grow and improve. The process makes you go outside of your comfort zone while forcing you to grow and find another solution.

Failure comes in many forms; It could be not getting the job you applied for, it could be not losing those extra 5 pounds before vacation, or underperforming and not reaching your goals. When you fail, you have a decision to make; to accept your failure or to get back up and find your solution.

The point is, failing isn’t always a bad thing, especially if you were putting in your best effort. It just means you are on the pathway to success. And once you make it on the other side those hurdles, the taste of success will be so much sweeter than if you never had to face those obstacles in the first place.

Fredrick Douglas once said,
“Without struggle, there can be no progress.”

I have a hard time disagreeing with that. There isn’t a time where I haven’t had to challenge or push myself in order to make real progress with my goals. Our failures can also be used as roadblocks that redirect us from where we do not need to be.

My broken link example is one of my smaller, more manageable failures. Nonetheless, your response to any kind of failure no matter how major or minor it is, needs to be taken care of the same. In order to achieve success from our failures, we need to be persistent in our efforts and learn from our mistakes.

Too many of us are scared to take that job, accept that new challenge, or make that move to a new state, all because of what, failure? What’s the worst that could happen? If you fail in the process, you just need to get back up because in the end, you’ll only come out stronger, smarter, and more successful. I encourage you to take that risk, because without risks and without moments of necessary failures, there can be no true reward. And who knows where your failures may take you…

You may create the next cultural icon like Walt Disney, you may discover groundbreaking technology like Thomas Edison, or maybe you’ll make a discovery that changes the world’s approach to physics like Albert Einstein. Who knows, maybe you’ll be the next Dr. Seuss and get rejected by 27 different publishers only to go on and sell more than 600 million copies of children’s books worldwide. You may decide you’d rather go Oprah's route, get fired as a news anchor, and then go on to become a billionaire with own your own TV channel. Or maybe you’re an athlete, and you’ll be the next Michael Jordan and get cut from your high school basketball team and then to go on to win Six Championships, five MVPs, and become arguably the greatest basketball player of all time.

It’s all about how you choose to perceive your failures and how you handle them in the future that determines your success. So get out there, fail, get up, and keep going… the reward will be worth it.