Fail Forward

People are often chastised for their mistakes and wrong steps, even worse they often list those missed steps in their mind and use them as a reason to convince themselves that they do not have what it takes to succeed.

One of my first enterprises was in financial services, we had a unique investment opportunity which was only really suited to the very wealthy, under English law if someone invests large sums of money into an unusual investment, the advisor has to prove the person is informed enough to make the decision and wealthy enough for any problems not to affect their lifestyle.

The criteria above meant that we could only really sell to millionaires, we had to take financial statements to prove eligibility. Over the next few years I sat down with and interviewed over 2000 millionaires across and around London.

I can assure you that the vast majority had stories to tell about how they nearly gave up, about how they narrowly missed a major setback and how much they had learned on the journey.

I learned from this that a series of errors which are recorded, analysed and learned from, shape improved future actions, the trick is to do the learning and keep on going.