Seth Godin wears many hats: serial entrepreneur, prolific
author, beloved blogger and inspirational speaker.
He’s also a master at failure, mostly because he’s done it
so many times. “I think it’s fair to say that I have failed more than most
people,” Godin said today from his onstage perch at New York City’s Advertising
Week. “And I’m super proud of that. Part of the rules of this game is, the
person who fails the most wins.”
While liberating, this presentation of failure as a trophy
isn’t new. Silicon Valley has long fetishized failure, to the point where “fail
fast” has become an informal industry mantra; it’s not uncommon for business
leaders and entrepreneurs to publicly present their failures like so many
badges.
But as Godin goes on to clarify, failure is a skill. You can
do it successfully, or you can fail at failure. “If you fail too big, you don’t
get to fail anymore. If you never fail, then you haven’t done anything,” he
said. The key is to find and consistently hit the sweet spot between those two
poles. “If you’re failing consistently in a way where you get to keep playing,
that’s pretty cool.”
On one hand, Godin encouraged the 200-plus audience to
pursue their “art,” no matter the lack of corresponding monetary gain or
critical praise:
You have to get to the point where you say, this is what I’m
going to make. And if [the audience] doesn’t get it, that’s ok…sooner or later
they may get it. In Van Gogh’s case, they didn’t get it until he was dead. But
that’s part of the deal.
At the same time, Godin gave a big nod to practicality.
While the ability to risk failure is the essential in the pursuit of greatness,
it doesn’t hurt to stack the deck in your favor and be strategic about your
approach. If you feel your true artistic calling is to make toothpick
sculptures, maybe take the process out of the woods and onto Kickstarter, where
far-out projects often find an audience. Does it mean it will definitely
gain traction? Of course not. But at the very least you’ve put yourself in
a position where it’s a possibility.
This balance – between failing too softly and failing too
hard – is nicely encapsulated by Godin’s description of skate skiing, a sport
he only recently discovered “The entire sport is, the person who leans forward
the most wins,” he said. During his first lesson, he asked the instructor “what
happens if you lean forward too much?”
To which the instructor, not unsurprisingly, replied: “You
land on your face.”
For Godin, that tension – leaning forward as far as possible
without landing face first on the ice – is skate skiing’s main draw. “It’s
what makes people get hooked on skate skiing,” he said. “It’s the feeling I
look for in every project I decide to do.”
In other words, don’t hold yourself back. But don’t aim to
fall on your face, either. Instead, search for that magical spot where you push
against your own limitations in pursuit of real victory.
In skate skiing and in life “you feel this moment where
there might not be a net, where it might not work,” said Godin. And then
you continue on anyway.
(taken from entrepreneur.com)
