I have had a lot of success, which is usually preceded by a lot more FAILURE. That’s the system that works for me. Fail forward, as it were. There are many folks out there who are more talented and plenty who are smarter than me (smarter than I?)  who seem to be able to navigate success smoothly and with few foibles.

I’m not in that group. I find that I don’t hit home runs until I strike out a few times.

For me, the key is to keep swinging without fear of embarrassment. I used to joke with my kids that I lack an embarrassment gene. The truth is that I recognized that grinding it out yields results for me, and the definition of grinding it out is: fail, fail, fail, fail, SUCCEED!

Many people stop because they look bad in the process, or someone calls them out for a lack of knowledge, talent, or even preparedness. Or worse, they perceive that they’ll look bad without anyone even chiding them, so they stop.

I just read an alarming statistic about this. Five thousand people a year die from choking due in part because they get up and leave the table rather than suffer the embarrassment of choking in front of other people!

Listen, what you do may not be life or death but get over yourself. You will mess up and get called out and feel stupid sometimes but remember, the only way to fail is to quit.  

Many years ago I read a memoir by Richard Machowicz, a US Navy SEAL. As I said this was many years ago but something he said has never left me. “When training got insane at BUDS, SEAL camp and I saw the truth of the statistic that 98% of the guys who entered washed out, I used to think this: There are only two ways I can fail to become a Navy SEAL. I either drop dead, or I quit. So on every long pack-loaded run and every freezing swim, when the pain became unbearable, my mantra was Not Dead, Can’t Quit.”

Fail forward with me and Own Your Sales Gene…