Karla and Jack

Are you afraid to fail? Most people are afraid of  failure. The problem is if we don’t risk the possibility of failure, we won’t succeed

Most (probably really all) very successful people fail more often than they succeed. Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times before he got the light bulb to work.

Jack Canfield, author of “Chicken Soup for the Soul”, was turned down by publishers 134 times before he got a yes.

Donald Trump may be the biggest failure of all and possibly one of the biggest come back success stories.

All these “failures” led to enormous successes.

I talk with inventors everyday who let the fear of failure stop them from being successful. They are afraid to move forward with their ideas because they don’t know what to do next.  Other inventors rush to patent and then are fearful of pursuing a licensing or manufacturing partner. Don’t fear failure. If you let the fear in, you may find yourself frozen and unable to make progress. Roosevelt said it best, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.”

Here is the secret to overcoming fear. Take action. Put one foot in front of the other everyday and just do one thing that moves you forward toward your goal.

If you are in the idea stage, research how people currently solve the problem your new product solves. Write down why your product is better than that solution. If it is not better then figure out how you could improve your product to be better. Start asking other people if they have the same problem and what they do about it.  When you find people who have the same problem and  they don’t like the current solutions write down what they think is missing in the current solutions. Also write down information about that person in your product notebook. That person is your target customer and you need to be very clear who is your target customer. You also need to be clear on who isn’t your target customer.  When you find people who don’t have the problem or like the current solutions on the market and don’t need your product write that down too.  Keep all of this in your product journal. This is taking steps to move forward.

Or maybe you’re stuck on creating a prototype. Again, push through your fear and start by  creating a primitive one. My husband wanted to create a product that would pull ingrown hairs out after he shaved. He went to the store and bought a lampshade finial for the handle. Then he went to the hardware section of the store and found a 2″ long, 1/4″ diameter steel rod  with threading on one end. He screwed the rod into the lampshade finial. Before my eyes it started to take shape. He then used one of those miniature tools used by hobbyist called a Dremel tool to sand the other end of the steel rod to a point. In about 4 hours total, he had a very rough version of the product he had in his head and started trying it out. (By the way, he burnt his figure while he was sanding. Okay, 1 failure. Just 9,999 to go and he will be just like Edison.)

The moral of the story is don’t let fear rob you of success.