Yesterday while waiting in line I caught a t-shirt with the U.S. Marine Corps emblem and the following quote
Pain is weakness leaving the body
There’s a lot of wisdom in that quote and I wanted to relate it to business. I didn’t come up with a nice compact quote, but here’s the idea.
Every failure should teach you something and in that learning take you one step closer to success. Early last week I posted safe is not remarkable and closed the post with a quote that deserves another read.
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
–Robert F. Kennedy
If you want to succeed at anything you need to be willing to fail. Mistakes will happen along the way, but think of each one as something that leaves your business and helps to make your business more successful. No business will run perfectly from start to finish, but the sooner you make mistakes the sooner you can prevent that mistake from happening again.
With every mistake you make, a little bit of failure is leaving your business taking it toward a greater success.
If you can think of a nice quote that captures the essence of the quote at the top of this post let me know. The title to this post was the best I could come up with and I’m sure there’s something better.
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Great quote friend. I had totally forgot about that specific quote about weakness leaving the body. Each day you can build upon each success or challenge.
I have one that might be a little graphic for a post in relation to achieving success in the area of a mission or war.
Let’s just say that you either win or lose the Superbowl a the end of the game. Better make those mistakes in practice because when it comes to game time and it’s all for real you go home a winner or … you know….
Stephen Welton
Thanks Stephen. I had never seen the quote before, but it immediately stood out. I think the Super Bowl analogy is a good one. That’s one reason why you practice to get all those mistakes out so they don’t show up in a game.
That’s the approach I use too, Stephen – fail in practice, not during competition 🙂
There also was a quote, close to “The way to success is paved with failures” or something.
Then again, we should try to minimize failing, and focus on improvement. Otherwise, this talk about failing may create some unnecessary excuses 🙂
I think that’s the quote I was looking for. I believe its “The road to success is paved with many failures,” but I could be off a little too. Thanks for mentioning the quote. I think the concept of failure is that we shouldn’t be afraid to try. I agree we should be optimizing things, but we have to put something out there in the beginning that we can later optimize.
I was browsing through the site and the quote caught me eye.
Seems it was every day my First Sergeant (I was army not, marines) would yell that out during morning P.T.
Even though its cliche, there is truth in it. The harder you push (more pain you feel), the harder you can push, the more you can tolerate, the more you can do.
Before the army, I though I was in good shape, I could do a morning run of a few miles. When at my unit we ran 8-10 miles every morning. A training exercise would consist of jumping out of a plane with over 100lbs of gear and demo. After landing, go for a 20 mile march (still carrying all of that gear) to do the mission. Finally, heading back home, in LPC’s (Leather Personnel Carrier, thats boots for every one else).
You never know what you can do until you push the limits. Pushing the limits is painful.
I didn’t know you were in the army Paul. I bet the quote has more meaning to you then it does to me. Quite honestly it was new to me, but it immediately caught my attention.
That’s some day. I’m certainly not in the best shape in the world, but I do have endurance. Still no way I want to jump out of a plane with 100lbs and then start on the 20 mile hike just to get to work.
It’s true though that the only way you can expand your limits is to push past them. I have a lot of respect for people who make it through military training. I don’t know that I could have and anyone who can impresses me.
My name is Meghan and I am doing an internship for a company called GoldenDiscs. It is a record company based in Ireland and is looking to sell their products online. They have asked me to do the research and look at the possibilities of success or failure. I am almost 100% confident in the success of them going online. I have done loads of research on prices and impacts for the company. Now I am just looking for some advice as far as the possibilies for this company. I agree with the saying ”Pain is weaknes leaving the body” especially since my brother is a marine. I feel that this company can loose nothing by trying this out. The worst that could happen would be that they would get recognized possibly on a larger scale and that is far from a bad thing. Anyone have any advice or comments???
Meghan I agree with you that the company has a great chance of success online, though in the end the only way to know is to try, learn from any mistakes, and continue to try. And I think you’re right that even if they don’t make sales directly online they can still increase the reach of their brand.
Have you searched to see if any other companies are selling similar records online? Have you searched to see if there are people looking to purchase records online. Both would be an indication that success is a possibility.
To see if people are wanting to buy records online you can spend some time on social media sites and forums related to music to see what’s being said. You can also do some keyword research to see if people ae searching for record related queries.
Try researching keywords at:
Overture
WordTracker
KeywordDiscovery
and get a feel for how many people are using phrases that might lead to a sale.
GREAT BLOG!
Thanks Michael.
Every Failure Takes You One Step Closer To Success. Completely agree but you have to remember the mistakes and keep moving in the same direction.
Good work!
@sibaritas
Thanks Sibaritas. It’s true you do need to learn something from the mistakes. I don’t know that you have to move in the same direction though. Sometimes what we learn from a mistake is that we’ve been moving in the wrong direction and it’s time to change paths.
I would like to know if anyone has already came up with this quote:
“Each time I ‘fail,’ I’m just another step closer.”
I find this quote very accurate, whereas you can not succeed without failing.