How to turn your failures into a success

3 Ways you can fail

I want to tell you differently. I want to tell you that there are truly only 3 ways that you can fail.

#1 - The first is to never try. You've already passed that one. You're trying. You've made an effort. You are here. You are listening to this podcast. You are trying to build an online business.

#2 - The second is to quit. You are absolutely in control of if you choose to quit or not. 

#3 - The third is to not improve and this is what I want to focus on today.

But before I jump into that, I want to comment on the fact that as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe in eternal progression.

Redefining success

In addition to redefining your definition of failure, I want you to redefine your definition of success. I have believed, or I did believe for many years, that success in my business was getting to a point where I was making a good amount of income and helping a good number of people.

But, ultimately, there really is only one success and that is growing and becoming more like our Savior, Jesus Christ. If your business is helping you to do that, then your business is successful because God's ultimate goal is our eternal progression in mortality, in eternal life. That is God's goal.

So when you go start this business, He's thinking much bigger than you are. He is not thinking just about the money that might bring to your family right now. Although, I do believe that is important to him. His ultimate goal and purpose is to use this business to bring you closer to Him and to bring others closer to Him somehow.

And I will tell you, I have learned so much about myself and my relationship with my Heavenly Father and my Savior through my businesses in ways that I never imagined. I would encourage you to change your mindset a little about your definition of success and what that actually means in your life when you think about this business.

Redefining Failure

One of my favorite quotes is from Henry Ford, and he said this,

"Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently."

So let's talk about that for a minute. In my life, I started a business many years ago called 'Frugalicious.' This was shortly after my boys were born. I started creating a computer program. It was written in Excel, but it was a program that would track grocery prices.  I hired women from my neighborhood and had them enter the grocery ads every single week. And then this program would analyze those prices and it would calculate out which items were on sale that week, for their very lowest price. So then I knew to go stock up on those products.

Now, this business was a fantastic idea, but according to some definitions of failure, it failed. It did not take off. I did not help thousands of women. I did not make thousands of dollars, and the business itself could be considered a failure.

But guess what? It gave me the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently. To take those things that I had learned and apply them to a new business. So here's another quote for you. This one's anonymous, but it's also one I love.

"Failure is a lesson learned. Success is a lesson applied."

So if I had stopped right there and I had determined "I'm a failure, I give up I'm not cut out for business. This didn't work." And I had completely stopped then there would have been no success because I wouldn't have taken the lessons I learned from that failure or misstep and created something better.

So eventually I turned that business into Simple Family Preparedness. And when I say eventually, I mean, eventually. It was years of work. If you want to hear about that story, go back and listen to episode #1 of The Goodness Squad Podcast. I talk a little bit about that in there, but I had many failures or missteps or lessons learned as a mother, as a business owner, and it took me many years to learn from those lessons in a way that I could apply them and change what I was doing.

I've got one more quote for you. This one is from Dennis Waitley. He says,

"Failures should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. A temporary detour, not a dead end."

I want you to consider this in light of the fact that God is a parent. God gave us agency. He gave us the opportunity to fail because he knew that was the best way for us to grow and to learn.

Do not give up because you feel like you have failed at something because of a misstep, because of a lesson learned. Instead, continue learning. Remember, the only three ways to fail are to never try, to quit, or to not improve. So if you see that misstep or that lesson learned as a failure, you will not use it to improve, but God wants us to improve. He wants us to grow and become better in every way, and failure provides that opportunity. It provides us a way to learn.

Opposition in all things

We learn more when we fail than we do when someone teaches us. If I tell you, "go out and create an email list from day one in your business," hopefully you follow that advice. But if you don't and you fail, you now know that is the smart way to build a business because you've experienced the opposite.

In this world, opposition in all things, like Lehi taught, is important. It is essential to our growth, and that doesn't exclude your business. The only way you will grow in business is by failing and seeing those failures as lessons learned. As you turn those into lessons applied, you will see success.

Ask yourself this question. What will your failures teach you? What have your failures already taught you, and are you taking those lessons learned and turning them into lessons applied so that you can see success in your business?

Your assignment from this podcast episode is to think through one past failure in your business and decide what those lessons learned were and to figure out how you can turn those into lessons applied in your business in the future.

Coming Up

I can't say it enough. I am so grateful for you taking the time to be here with me today. If you are not yet subscribed, I highly suggest you hit that subscribe button because in the next episode we are going to be talking about priestcraft. And my goal is to help you feel more confident in charging for your services and what you offer.

Last, if you would like some help digging through your past failures in your businesses, those lessons learned and figuring out how to turn them into lessons applied. I would love to have you join me in the Ask Me Anything Group where you can ask me anything at all about your business life and I will answer your questions. I will leave a link to that in the podcast notes,  but you can also find that at DesignedForGoodness.com/askmeanything.

I hope to see you there.

Girls: Thanks for listening to our mom.  She always tells us practice makes progress when you mess up. She sure gives a lot of chances too. Well, Practice.