The Key To Success

“The key to success is failing and failing fast.” 

I had a mentor that told me that once. I used to take failure or rejection very personally. He said “Nina, you have to be able to fail, and fail fast. So what does that mean? First, I had to get used to failing. Growing a studio or reaching any goal is never linear. It will have its peaks and valleys. It’s all part of the process. Second, I had to get up quickly and move forward.

I’m that person who has 100 ideas in one hour.. We’ve tried and implemented so many of these ideas in the studio and more than half of them were futile. I would get upset, angry at myself, and resentful. Until I understood what my mentor was saying. These setbacks were only problems and “failures” if I saw them as such. But really, it’s just bringing me one step closer to what is working. I’m filtering out the challenges one by one and slowly honing in on the formula that will get me to where I want to be. 

I was listening to an old episode of the James Wedmore podcast Mind Your Business. He was saying that problems are not bad. It’s part of the process when running a business and we need these to refine the company, processes’ and people. He used an analogy “You can’t go surfing and expect not to get wet.” This really hit me. I was looking at obstacles and challenges the wrong way all these years. Every time we did run into an issue, we found a way to deal with it and prevent it from happening again. That’s not something to get down about, that’s something to get excited about! We’re refining ourselves as we’re filling in these gaps. We’re grooming ourselves to be the best company we can be. So shouldn’t we be grateful for the seasons of struggle? Shouldn’t we be enthusiastic that there was a challenge and we overcame it,  instead of being upset that there was a challenge to begin with? 

One of the benefits of being part of a dance class/team is learning  to fail and learning  to fail fast. The likelihood that all students, performances and routines are going to be seamless every time is very slim. So students, instructors and the leadership team alike, have to learn from our mistakes quickly, learn to move forward quickly and not waste time pointing fingers or beating ourselves up. We’re going to win some, we’re going to lose some but we are always focused on moving forward with improved skills and confidence.

The goal is not perfection. The goal is progress.