How To Fail In 12 Easy Steps

How do you define success? As a small business owner, I’ve had my shares of success. As I sat down over the weekend to write about success, I discovered something interesting:

Every time you meet with a big success, there are several failures that lead up to that success.

So in essence the more you fail, the more you’ll succeed.

Building a successful photography business

Here are 12 of my top failures that actually helped lead to my success.

1. Talk is cheap.
Spend a week listening to what you say. Do you tell your co-workers, “Someday I’m going to start my own business.” Or “I really want to work from home to spend more time with my family.”

What have you done to work towards that goal? If you truly mean what you say, then you need to create some action steps to make sure you accomplish it.

“Someday I’m going to star my own business.” Is completely different than “I’ll have my first client for my own business by April 1st.” Give yourself solid goals with timelines you can manage on your current schedule.

2. Listen to your own advice.
Ever heard the phrase, “A shoemakers children have no shoes?”

What advice do you give your clients regularly? Do you follow your own advice?

For me, I always talk about creating systems and making sure you have everything in place to run effectively. Yet I still have to stop a couple of times per year and analyze my own business to make sure I have my own systems in place. It’s easy just to do things yourself, and put off creating an easier way of getting things done. But in the long run its this small tasks that will end up eating away all of your time.
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