Here is a reply I left at one of my favorite blogs/web sites — Pamela Slim — a champion of starting and building small businesses (not just consulting.)
In her post, Pamela discusses how to react after a “stumble,” including her own examples.
She asked for comments, so I shared mine:
One of the best pieces of advice I got on “stumbling” was shared with me almost forty years ago. As a brand new sales engineer (I had pivoted from ten years of design work) my boss sent me to a sales training class.
During a break, I asked a a more experienced classmate how he handled losing a sale.
His reply was “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on. ”
He went on, “Furthermore, if you’re not failing (stumbling), you are not trying hard enough. Every failure is a learning experience. After twenty years, I still lose sales but I’m doing just fine. ”
Ten years later, that advice was invaluable when I started my own engineering consulting firm. Actually, I started twice, and the first time I stumbled badly.
But I tried again later, and then the first day in business (1987) the stock market crashed. Scary, but I succeeded anyway.
That same advice sustained me again when my late business partner and I started a training operation in conjunction with the consulting. It took us four times to get that right.
We eventually ended training over 12,000 students in hundreds of multi-day classes around the world. What a blast! Glad we didn’t let a few stumbles stop us from that adventure.
Pam is so right! Don’t stop – just step back and figure out what to do next — and next — and next. It took Thomas Edison hundreds of trials until he got the light bulb right. But when he did, he lit the world.
Yes, I’ve discussed this topic here before, but it is worth hearing again. Remember the jingle we all heard as kids, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
But before you do, back off and evaluate. You may need to try something different. As Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.”
Here is a reply I left at one of my favorite blogs/web sites — Pamela Slim — a champion of starting and building small businesses (not just consulting.)
In her post, Pamela discusses how to react after a “stumble,” including her own examples.
She asked for comments, so I shared mine:
Yes, I’ve discussed this topic here before, but it is worth hearing again. Remember the jingle we all heard as kids, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
But before you do, back off and evaluate. You may need to try something different. As Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.”