Day 169 - What to Do When Failing

March 27, 2024

This conversation explores the often neglected topic of failure and what to do when facing failure. The host discusses the lack of guidance and advice available for dealing with failure and the loneliness that can accompany it. The conversation emphasizes the importance of learning from failure and provides practical tips for navigating through it. Takeaways Failure is a natural part of life and can provide valuable learning experiences. Identifying the primary cause of failure is crucial for determining the best course of action. Accepting failure and planning for recovery can help mitigate the negative impact. Documenting failure allows for reflection and sharing of insights for future growth. Sound Bites Chapters 00:00 Introduction: The Neglected Topic of Failure 01:05 The Paradox of Failure 04:19 Accepting Failure and Planning for Recovery 06:00 Documenting Failure for Learning and Growth 07:28 Managing Failure with a Rational Approach

Episode Transcript

Guy Reams (00:01.166)
Today is day 169, What to do when failing.

So I hear a lot about how to be successful. Self -help gurus, people on the internet, friends and family are always telling you about what you need to do to be successful. But what people rarely talk about is what to do when you're failing. So success is great. When you're experiencing success, the world is on fire. You love everything. It's awesome. But when you're experiencing failure,

Nobody's around to help. You get lots of advice and guidance and pats on the back, but you don't get any real clear advice on what to do when failing. As a consequence, sometimes failing can be a very lonely place. So a lot of people talk about how failure is good. You need to fail in order to learn. You need to fail in order to grow. And a lot of people will look back at their lives and say, I learned the most when I was failing.

But I've noticed that the only people that share that are the people that are really successful. So really successful people like to talk about how they failed many times in order to become what they are today. And that's certainly true for me. I've failed many times too. I'm always failing. So we tell people, be okay with failing.

However, I wish the manual would come with some instructions on what to do when you're failing because it's so difficult to experience it. Not the actual failure itself, but the process of failing. So what do you do when you fail? I mean, I talked to a lot of new business owners, entrepreneurs, where their business is in the process of failing and they know it. I'm losing money. I'm running out of cash.

Guy Reams (01:58.414)
I can't get new customers. They know they're failing. So what do you do when you know you're failing? How do you react? Do you try to double down and fix it? Do you just give up and run away? I mean, what do you do when you're in the process of failing and you know? So this is a paradox that I'm going to attempt to address. Now, I'm not the expert in this by any stretch. I hate failure. I hate experiencing it and I avoid it like the plague. I've written many blogs on how failure is good.

But honestly, in reality, I don't want to fail. And I hate going through it. It's misery. So I'm doing anything I can to avoid failure when possible. I may not be the best to talk about this. However, I did come up with a couple of ideas that could potentially help in the process of failure. So the first one is identifying the primary cause.

So when you're failing, it's so easy to start lamenting the failure. You're in anguish and agony and all the world is collapsing and you're just miserable. If you can take a step back, take a deep breath and analyze, well, what was the cause of this failure? What was the catalyst? What was the thing that started the ball rolling down the hill? Why am I failing and what was the original causal link that caused my failure?

If you can take some time to really evaluate, you will probably come to one key moment or one key decision or one key influence that's causing your failure and your demise. Once you know what that is, you now have something real and tangible to evaluate. This is the best thing you can do to determine whether or not you should go forward or get out quick. So in my opinion, once you know the primary cause, you can start to ask some very real questions.

Is this primary cause insurmountable? Was this something I didn't expect? Was this something I hadn't planned for? Is this something I can resolve or fix? And more importantly, is this something that I have the money to resolve or fix, or do I have the resources to resolve and fix? If you can fix the primary cause, and you can overcome that, then I would recommend putting all your energy to fix the primary cause so that you can move on and get out of failure.

Guy Reams (04:19.47)
If you determine the primary cause of something unintended and overwhelming, now you know the cause of your failure and that can help ease the burden of reaching a point of failure. The second thing that I think is once you determine that failure is inevitable, now I know people are going to say, never accept defeat. But you know what? People that say that never have experienced real defeat.

Because I've experienced real defeat and sometimes you just can't avoid it. You're going to the plane's going down. There's nothing you can do. So, so in some cases it's very wise and mature to say, you know what? This isn't working out. I'm going to fail and I know it.

So the second thing that I came up with is to prepare for the recovery. While you're heading downward, while you know the failure's coming, don't use that time just to wallow in self -pity and despair. Use that time to start thinking about what your next strategy is gonna be and start preparing for the recovery. You know you're gonna hit rock bottom, you know the failure's coming, that's okay. Start considering what the recovery's gonna look like and start planning the recovery.

Plan the recovery with just as much vigor as you planned the startup. Because the people that are usually successful after failure are the ones that have a plan to recover. And so I would focus on your next move rather than worrying about the tragedy you're dealing with today. Finally, my third tip is to document the failure. This is something you will not want to do. It's painful, I know.

But look at it this way, people say that you learn from failure and they always say this in a generic sense. Rarely do I hear somebody tell you exactly what they learned in the failure. Imagine if you documented your failure as it was happening and wrote down what was the causes, what was the reason, what did you not think through correctly, what frailties or what weaknesses did you have, what caused your failure. If you document that very carefully,

Guy Reams (06:28.206)
You will now have an actual written document or article that describes your failure. This is a very valuable thing for you to share with your children, share with your peers, share with your next investor, so you can be very cognizantly aware of what was causing the failure. The more acutely you know that, the more you understand that, the more you will learn and gain out of the experience, and the more invaluable your insight will be because you document it.

I like to pretend like I'm an archivist or an historian documenting the demise. It's a fun way for me to catalog what went wrong. Finally, failure is never pleasant. You can manage it more effectively. You can understand the causes and the lessons, and you can plan for recovery. So I think failure can be something that you'd learn to grow into if you treat it with a rational and reasonable approach.

It's easy for me to say when you're going through failure you don't feel like doing anything rational or reasonable. But I think if you can take a step back and do one of these three things that I talked about it can be really helpful.