is it possible for a failure to help you succeed?

My story – I had a very successful consulting business several years ago.

The business grew in leaps and bounds, however, I never learned how to manage the cash flow properly. So while my projects were profitable, I ran out of cash. And then the business failed.

I had to layoff 27 people in one day. One of them had gotten engaged several hours earlier.

It was devastating and I hope nobody ever has to go through something similar.

However – I think it started as serious of events which have made me a much better person and has led me to my current place in life. And the lessons I have learned I am able to share with others in very concrete ways.

Here are some fascinating stories shared below, and everyone can learn a lesson from each and every one of them. Don’t forget to include your own failure-success story at the bottom.

Click here to find the original question and answer on LinkedIn Answers

The Success Stories series provides case studies from people about what it takes to become successful. Each of us is unique in our goals and aspirations, but we have things in common with others. Through the 10,000,000 people in my LinkedIn network we can share ideas and solutions that will help you achieve your goals. While I don’t always agree with all the comments I receive, I include all that are presented coherently and could help at least one of my readers.

The questions have been slightly edited for grammar and presentation. Comments and Kudos, while always appreciated, have been edited out.

Click here to read all the Success Stories.

I was a journalism school graduate with no real experience. I thought I could walk into any newspaper and get a job. I was wrong. I ended up setting type and doing part-time reporting for a tiny weekly newspaper whose editor once worked for The Associated Press.

He sent me to a boring local school board meeting and I wrote a boring (fairly sarcastic) article. He was very angry and told me I would never be a journalist, never work for The Associated Press or even the local daily newspaper.

The next day I applied to The Associated Press office in the nearest town. It turned out they didn’t care about experience. They had a three-hour exam that included vocabulary, spelling and real-life exercises like writing a 300-word story about a downtown fire from handwritten notes … in 15 minutes.

I got the job and went on to work for AP for 14 years. I sent my first front-page byline story (The Denver Post) to that editor.

I owe a lot to him, and to my stubbornness.

Many years ago the start-up company that I designed for started it’s descent into oblivion. I was brought to part-time status. The company graciously allowed me to keep benefits and 20 hours per week designing for various projects while maintaining the corporate website.

I learned a lot from the failures of the company itself. No details to go into here. But I had to take my previous side projects and bring them to the forefront, starting a full-time consultancy while simultaneously teaching 2 college courses over the course of the year. Many of the people I previously worked at in this company called or contacted me and asked me to work with them on design-related projects. I also found some clients through new networks. I ended up getting more interesting work that utilized far more of my full talents over the course of the next year or 2 working for myself through the consultancy.

I would like to narrate an incidence from my school days. I was in grade 5 that time and in Indian schools speaking in English is always promoted considering the value it carries in business and social life.

Our class teacher used to gift a pen every week for anyone who used English for conversation in campus during school hours. I was an introvert and rarely spoke to anyone though I was one among the top 3 students. I eagerly used to wait every week for whole academic session, but excluding me, almost everyone in my class got that reward; many students got multiple pens. And finally came the last week of our academic session, I was expecting that at least now I will get the reward but it was not awarded to me. I didn’t realize that my introvert behavior would not let me win that reward. Though the reward didn’t carry lot of importance but that was a terrible hurt at that stage, as I failed to get that every week in that calendar year and almost everyone except me got that in my class.

I started working on that failure from next grade on. I participated in all the activities that used to take place(sports, academics, music and painting etc.), gradually all the efforts and hard work started giving results.

Finally when I reached the last grade of our school, 12, I was awarded best student of our school, considering my all around and consistent performance year after year. I knew why I got that reward, it was directly related to that incidence.

I think that one failure of not getting a pen still keeps me motivated to fight and give my best in whatever I do.

In my own little demented world, the only failure I recognize is the failure to ‘try or make an effort’. This is something I have been guilty of more in my personal than professional life. As for not reaching goals that I may have set, these can be hard to accept but in my experience, it is in those circumstances that I learn the most and I take the most forward. When a goal is achieved, it often seems easy but when a goal is not achieved we often achieve more than we initially appreciate. If we continue to make an effort and try our best, we can always consider ourselves successful!

Every failure and every success teaches a new lesson. There is no one who always failed or always succeeded. One’s life is a mix of both, the ratio varying from person to person. A success leads to another big success and a failure leads to a success, provided person has the capability to learn and analyze. In many cases a failure is because of one’s own weakness, incapability, lack of willingness, lack of faith/trust, lack of urge/fire to succeed, lack of understanding the goal (lack of vision). Too many successes make a person too habitual of success that he becomes either too adamant or too cool about success. Too may failures either make a person too adamant for success or too depressed to try to achieve success.

I have many successes followed by failures and failures followed by successes. Each failure forced me to think inside me, introspect, talk to myself and analyze why so? Sometimes I got answer sometimes I did not. Each success forced me to feel stronger, more deliverable, more capable, and more proud. I think what I did at the time of failure (introspect, question within, analyze) if was done at the time of successes, it would have made me capable of achieving more successes.

One should not lose hope… must learn and analyze.

I work as a motivational speaker based on my various adventures, including a first ski descent of Mount Everest‘s North Face.

Last summer I joined a reed-boat expedition intending to cross the North Atlantic. The boat broke into two pieces, 800 miles from the nearest island. Even though we managed to keep it afloat and continue the sea-journey several hundred miles towards the Azores, we ended up abandoning ship mid-sea.

I considered it not only a failure, but worse: An unnecessary one.

But the funny thing was: Lecture clients today seems a little bit fed up with "success stories" as there is no lack of Olympic gold medalists and their likes in Norway, my closest market.

The failure with the raft seems for this very reason to prove a success in my Lessons-Learned-styled presentation by focusing on team-work, visions broken into road maps and humbleness as part of performance.

Sincerely I don’t think a great failure could be useful for future.

I’ve never had great failure in my history, maybe some minor ones, but nothing serious. I think one should pay a lot of attention to other’s business to understand their failures and learn without being involved.

Maybe we are using term failure with different meanings. My failure meaning is a great disaster, one of these ones that ruins your finances and leave you in pieces. If your meaning is that of a great working difficulty, like to be fired without a reason, it’s all different. I lived such an experience and it was very good for me. In the first stage I was afraid to become a beggar but, after a little time, I realized it was a great opportunity and now, after six years I thanks every year the person who fired me.

And you have to think that to be fired in Italy is a real problem because the Italian job market is poor and the Italian economy is the worst one you can only imagine.

[ZT - Edison said if you don't fail - you are not trying hard enough]

I have learned to never give up.

I bid on a wireless system years ago, bid on the exact product the client requested and won. Got the system in place and it didn’t perform no where near as good as the demo. I fought for three months to make this work, until I finally walked into their office and said I was beaten, there is no way in hell this is going to work and requested to pull my equipment and refund their money.

I was asked to explore other ways of making the system work, which I did and even getting the client to spend another $40k on a solution, which failed. I was forced to defend myself in front of their senior management. Where I didn’t offer any defense, I was willing to pull everything out and refund their money. They sat back and said they will contact me about this after review.

The next morning I got a phone call from this company’s internal repair team for information on an unrelated problem somewhere else in the plant. I told them what to look for and that I would be back up there in the area in a couple days if they needed a hand.

I was requested to stop in as they were not confident enough to solve the problem. I walked in, looked at the equipment, popped the lid, reached in and reset the only non soft spot. Put the lid back on and said done (that equipment hasn’t burped since), said that was free and left to go my next client’s location. Over the next few days I got a series of calls of what to do next with other non-related equipment problems throughout this plant, where I gave the free advice.

A week later I got the call, even though the system I supplied screwed up this company was so impressed by my willingness to refund and the praise I got from their internal repair organization, they just had to stay with me.

All I did was work hard and never gave up.

[ZT Perseverance!]

I really believe there is no failure, only feedback. Failure is what makes so many people stop. For those who can see the feedback in any situation, it allows them to grow and learn from the experience.

I was stuck in administration and project management for 7 years while I wanted to be marketing – namely, brand manager in FMCG. I was working for international companies and already gained managerial position. While I had marketing education, no FMCG company wanted to even give me a chance to start as marketing assistant I was over-qualified for assistant and lacking practical experience for marketing.

I am normally very active in job search, sending CVs, asking friends. And no one wanted me even to ask for an interview in marketing department. I was in despair and then I thought that if you could not get into the front door, you can always try backstage. So I applied to advertising agencies for account manager – I had project management skills which were very useful and agencies are not as picky and formal in selecting their candidates. So I found job in a month or so. I worked hard and learned fast so in a year and a month I got my dream position of brand manager in smaller scale international FMCG. If I succeeded in finding a marketing assistant position earlier it would have taken me years before I could get a job of my dream. 

I started my first company in my teenage years around the same time I started Uni. It was a web hosting company and an IT training institute. In a short span of a few months we were able to sell our services to some major companies within the country. We were growing rapidly and our customer base was expanding as well as our training institute, which was particularly doing very well. I was already ahead my age, quite technical and very eager.

Everything was going fine, fame, money, size, but we would still always struggle to pay our bills at the end of the month.

We were in the news, in top rated IT exhibitions, got great attention as we were clearly the youngest business owners in almost everywhere we went, so got lots of attention.

And in the end this cash flow problem got out of hands as we borrowed lots of money from banks / investors for unmeasured marketing efforts (exhibitions, print media, brochures, posters, billboards). We were a bunch of well known business teens. But due to bad, uncontrolled marketing effort, a very costly and large office, lots of extra expenses that we did not need – somewhat due to lack of managerial skills- but most importantly due to extra money that we borrowed from banks to pay for all this, brought us down when although were trading well and the business was growing. We were just unable to pay the monthly commitments of borrowed money and ran out of gas.

What did I learn?

• Manage your finances, small businesses cannot afford not to take it seriously.
• Any marketing effort, no matter HOW SMALL OR LARGE, needs to be measured. If you are not measuring the result, there is a bigger chance that it’s not working.
• Don’t take people words for what they have committed. Only customers you have are the singed contracts or even better, the money in the account.
• Keep the monthly cost as low as possible. If you can’t afford an office, work from home and only move if it is definitely necessary.
• If you do not have a lot of investment, market first, get a few contracts etc. before you leave your job.
• And Network. Start networking very effectively now if you would like to run a business in the next few years so you have the knowledge, advise and trusted friends.
• Learn from experience as success can actually be copied. The best gift you can get from anybody who has done it successfully is advice. Use it.
• Be ready for the worst. It will be hard, very hard to get to where you want to be, so be ready and not surprised, no matter how easy it looks.         

The essential dichotomy….innate bipolarity….if there was no failure, or fear of failure, there would be no concept of success…

Oh, almost all my successes have been of failures…..almost every single one of them, I’d say. Failures motivate me to try, fear of failure keeps me on my toes.     

Failure is stepping stone to success.  No one can attain success without failing. Every one works, grabs or pick an option to attain success whatever the issue may be, but its circumstances that decide the fate of action, option or opportunity one has selected or worked. One has to re-attempt with bigger power to overcome failure, there are always more than one options, once you met failure. Failure is not end of day, its beginning of night that would again turn into day soon.

Initial years after a great fall from top let me down, but then slowly learn to fight back, fight back to overcome all the odds generated out due to failure. Now I feel more contended, more confident, more humble, more mature. Yes, now its look like a lesson learned out of failure, to make another big success.      

First, I have to consider how I define "failure". When I was much younger, "failure" was defined and understood to mean trying something and not succeeding at it. However, in the "failure" was a lesson – that what I’d tried and the way I had tried it didn’t work. Therefore, if I wanted to try at that whatever-it-was, again, I’d learned to attempt it in another way than the first time. Consequently, my definition/understanding of "failure" began to expand.

Fast forward to today — my understanding/appreciation/definition of "failure" is almost non-existent. Yes, of course, there are still times when I do something that didn’t work (or didn’t work the way I had expected it to) – but, that’s not a "failure" in my vernacular anymore — it’s a lesson learned. How can that be defined/understood as — failure?         

There are many ways to compute success and not all of them involve cash flow. Value fulfillment involves passion and perseverance to follow your dream in any area of endeavor. Systemic rules may change your route stimulating you to look at new ways of accomplishing these tasks, taking a ‘thinking out of the box’ avenue to accomplish your goals. However, with a bit of ingenuity, we can all make a difference as we all hold a piece of the global puzzle.

Since I did not qualify for federal grants in my quest to provide global nano-science education for young students, I made a decision in 2004 to gather all the resources developed by Universities and provide a free global knowledge base for students and teachers who want to learn.

My value fulfillment involves dedication to the larger goal that every student deserves an up-to-the-minute education involving new discoveries as research and technology development continues to change their world without informing or preparing them.

We all have the ability to focus our attention on our dream with the increase in communication tools that reach millions and expand the basic knowledge base for humanity by volunteering our time and effort without remuneration. It is a choice that we as individuals can make a difference.

It’s interesting to me how the narrative is so similar in these stories:

I faced a challenge… I ‘failed’… I learned something new and changed… I am more successful and happy now.

There is another narrative that can be played out in our life story:

I faced a challenge… I ‘failed’… I blamed others/circumstances… I learned nothing and did not change… I see the world as a bad place.

Ultimately, I believe the world only responds back to us with what we see in ourselves, making it real for us. A failure is a failure if we believe it. A failure is a challenge if we understand it.

I do not believe in failure. At the time, it may seem like failure, but everything that has happened to me in my personal and professional life has led me to where I am now. Older, wiser and much more aware of the world around me and the people in it. I feel that I am in the best position I have ever been in terms of my professional maturity and ability to succeed in whatever role I play. I would never have been able to start and run a successful marketing company in NYC – the most competitive market there is – had I not learned hard lessons that some may consider failure. They say that hindsight is 20/20 and I believe that now more than ever. Do I wish I had learned my lessons and gained knowledge and experience the easy way? Sure. But, I can truly say that I value those lessons as they have made me who I am today.

Failed my "A" levels, failed my degree, carried on working, got my (vocational) degree 10 years later (still no "A" Levels), did lots of temporary work. Then realized I hated my work life. I went home to work out what to do and 7 years later have a growing business, because my husband gave me the time and space to change my work life. I am still working for professional exams, and have failed some along the way, but am more determined than ever and have become a boring evangelist for my new profession.  I have never been happier.

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Add your insights and opinions in the comments section below!

Success Stories are part of my Success Through Balance approach to life. I believe that Success comes from living a balanced life. You can read more about being successful and the skills required here. 

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