Learning to Fail

At the beginning of 2015, I started an email series about how to use your social media for your business.  At the time I’d just started my brand, ‘Bare Bones’. I was using this brand to test out my ideas and the advice I was giving to clients.

At the start of 2017, I decided to kick things up a notch and really focus on developing Bare Bones. In order to keep things lean, I would keep running all parts of the business myself - designing the products, finding and visiting manufacturers, quality checking all the products, daily packing and fulfilling orders, social media advertising, customer relations … I really mean e-ve-re-thang.

The last three years have presented me with one of the steepest learning curves I could have imagined. Turns out there are a lot of things that I didn’t know that I didn’t know!  But, through that slow climb, I’ve been able to look back on a wealth of valuable lessons. I found that the strongest lessons didn’t come from when things just ‘fell into place’, but more so when they kinda fell apart.  

In those instances, after going through my usual cycle of negative emotions  (annoyance - self pity - defeat - doubt), I tried to make the most of these ‘failures’ and turn them into building blocks for the next step.

Matthew Syed elegantly points out in his book Black Box Thinking,

“This is the paradox of success: it is built upon failures”.

So, I decided I would share some of those experiences and lessons in order to help others.  People who might be running a small business, starting a brand, or just interested in hearing about someone else falling flat on their face and getting back up to do it again.

This is a series I call ‘Learning to Fail’.

I’ll be talking about things like: spending over $75K in social advertising in one year, trusting that manufacturers have your best interests at heart, design hubris, the ‘New Mafia’ aka Australia Post and having facebook shut down my advertising account with no explanation or warning.

I’d love to have you along for the series.  If you want to get these articles sent straight to your inbox, sign up with the form below.