What to do when you fail

Running your own blogging business is hard. There are certainly those days when you feel like you are on top of the world. Like there’s nothing that can stand in your way.

And then you try something and it fails. Sometimes it fails epically. You’re left feeling discouraged, wondering why everyone else has viral posts today and you don’t. Or why you don’t get as many cool blogger perks as you’d like or… the list is endless.

Let’s talk about the F word today. FAILURE.

It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen because you are daring and you are willing to risk messing up in order to discover something truly great.

Epic failures are a part of running your own business. If there’s one thing I wish more bloggers understood, it’s that failure is okay. In fact, there is so much to be learned from it, it can actually be hugely beneficial to your brand, moving forward.

Don’t shy away from it. Go ahead and try that big thing that you have been wanting to try. Why? Because you might fail. You might fail and learn awesome things about yourself and your audience. You’ll be given a whole lot more data to figure out what your audience wants and why what you tried failed.

Even better, go for that big scary thing that you want to try because you just might succeed. Maybe you’ll be successful on your first go or maybe you’ll have to fail a few times first. Either way you are winning. You win when you keep trying. When you constantly look for ways to improve your site, the experience that your audience has when they are on your site, and when you aren’t afraid to see what will happen when you try something new.

When you do try and fail, try to do three things

  1. Remember that it’s okay – grow through your failure, don’t be defeated by it!
  2. Assess why you failed – see if there were mistakes that you made along the way that may have prevented this particular failure. See if changes can be made to turn the idea into a success.
  3. Make a new plan – If changes can be made to try again, do so, and if not find a new idea to try. Always keep learning, adapting and trying new things. Don’t get stuck!

Don’t be afraid to try my friends. Amazing things grow out of failure.