Love What You Do, Do What You Love- Part 1

Learn to Make Awesome Mistakes. How I wish this were a real course and how I wish you could sign up today.

If I could teach you how to make glorious mistakes, it would help you keep the spark in your business. It would keep you from stagnation. It would keep your business from becoming moldy. Those who say, “I will only try it if I know I can succeed,” will never succeed. Because making mistakes is the only way to success.

February is a month filled with passion. If a face can launch a thousand ships, then surely entrepreneurial passion has launched several thousand ventures. Entrepreneurs fuel their fires with the stuff. It is discussed in myriads of blog posts, and for good reason. Because if you have a business fueled with passion, that means that you are doing what you love for a living. Anyone can fall in love with that idea.

But if you are doing the same thing day after day, how do you keep it fresh? Things can get, well–so daily. For both lovers and entrepreneurs, it is the daily grind that wears the passion into the ground. And then there is all the other stuff. Running a small business is so much harder than anyone dreams it would ever be.

All this month we will be discussing ways to find joy the journey, even while you are working your tail off. Which brings us to Part 1 of this month’s series. Please open your Successful Entrepreneur Kit. You will notice that Mistakes come awkwardly juxtapositioned inside your Kit.

You will also notice that the first manual is called, “The Plan”. Table stakes. Every entrepreneur knows the value of planning. And every entrepreneur understands the peril. We secretly know the actual performance of the best and brightest minds rarely line up with the planned performance. So why do we plan? Because it provides a trajectory. It provides a destination. The margin of error means that most of us are exploring new territory every day. And that means that most of us are going to be making mistakes. Big ones.

We are here to encourage you to embrace the big ones. Big bear hug. Come on! Group hug! Prior to launch, you must plan to ditch the fear. You must plan to jump in even if you are shaking. You must plan to make glorious mistakes. Courage and flexibility must be part of your Plan. We are not aiming to do it wrong. Quite the opposite. Courage accepts the odds and jump in anyway.

Glorious mistakes are the only stepping stones to real success. We are not talking the safe kind of mistake where you have one foot on the shore. We are talking the glorious kind; the kind where the boat starts to drift away from the dock, where you have one foot on the boat and the other on the dock sort of mistake. If there is a constant in small business, it is that the riskiest move is not to move. Nothing worthwhile has ever been achieved by remaining unduly loyal to The Plan.

Years ago, one of my kids had a hard time making mistakes. We had to practice. We started to play a particular game on family night which would be the equivalent to high stakes gambling for an 8-year-old: Pass the Pigs. It was the right combination of chance, strategy, and guts. It provided many opportunities to lose all your pigs in a safe environment. The practice helped. She learned she would not die if she lost all her pigs. She learned that she would never have more points if she never risked losing at least some of them.

What do you believe about making mistakes? If you are risk averse, it is good to find out why. It is also good to find an environment where you can practice Risk Light. Try dance lessons or a new sport–something you do not know how to do–and something where you can be at least a little bit vulnerable. Surely falling on your rear will help you lighten up. (Imagine how boring life would be without the blooper reel.)

Plus there are many other benefits to making mistakes. One of which is, of course, laughing at yourself. (A big hindrance to success is taking yourself far too seriously.) Mistakes can also be gloriously productive. Mistakes can be art. Mistakes can teach things that the classroom never could, and in such a way that you will never forget the lesson. Mistakes provide us with the knowledge of what does not work–which knowledge is just as vital as knowing what does work. Mistakes improve our character, and at the least, supplies us with a good dose of humility.

The next time you see a blog post entitled, “The 20 Mistakes You Do Not Know You Are Making”? I recommend you skip it. Why focus on not doing? Focus on doing. Do not waste a minute focusing on all the rules you should not be breaking. Go ahead and break a few.

Learn how to make glorious mistakes. 

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Why do we at etc!graphics inc, a graphic design company, care about your business strategies?  Because no matter how beautiful we make your visuals, your graphics will never make more sense than the clarity of your own vision. The clearer your target, the more lucid your marketing will be, and the better connection your visual graphics will make with your target customer. We want to help you become the best you can be. Join us all this month as we share ways to help your small business sustain and grow in a crowded marketplace. Etc!Graphics is devoted to helping you, the small business owner, think like a marketer.