Embracing Mistakes: How Learning from Imperfection Drives Success
‘I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.’ – Neil Gaiman
I love this quote because it allows us to admit our mistakes in business and not let them hold us back. At Curt’s Café (www.curtscafe.org) at the end of every day I would ask the students “what did you mess up today” or “what mistake did you make today” and then follow that with “if you aren’t making mistakes, you are trying hard enough”. Curt’s Café is a training program for at-risk young adults, and many of them had been negatively punished for anything they did wrong (as did many of us) so they often didn’t trust their decisions or capacity to do things right . But I believe that often times mistakes are the opportunity we didn’t know we needed to forge through to make things better. Let me give you a few examples:
When I decided to launch Save Small Shops on 10/1/2024 I knew I wasn’t ready – close, but not 100% ready. However I thought I had to start someday, because in businesses we are never really ready for everything. So launching Save Small Shops before all the ducks were in a row was perhaps a mistake because with the early launch a few major errors were pointed out, but this is what came out of it.
- We helped at the very least the businesses that had joined the site have a more robust holiday shopping season.
- We were able to educate people with over 100 posts in 3 months about the importance and ease of shopping locally.
- We met wonderful people who asked questions and shared ideas about the Directory so we could make it better as we entered 2025.
- I personally learned how to 1) post on Facebook, 2) post on Instagram, 3) post on Linken, 4) post blogs on our directory, 5) post on next door neighbor! Yep, 67 years old and 4 businesses and I had never posted a thing on any of these platforms!
- We were able to get all of our for 2025 so we are now really (almost) ready to move forward to Save Small Shops! We just need a phone app so if anyone knows of anyone who does that please have them contact savesmallshops@gmail.com
The one thing we did have in our favor when early was the entrepreneurial spirit of “can do” and “I’ve got this” so the mistakes we made were all quickly fixed and made the Directory even better than it was before. So let’s all seriously consider pushing our boundaries a bit more this year so help build our businesses and our communities. Let’s support each other when we push too hard with the boundaries and when we step back in fear of making a mistake and need a nudge. Happy Prosperous 2025!