Don't Be Satisfied With Failure.

Today's Marketing Cookie is about the benefits of failure.

I believe that failure is not the destination but rather a passageway to success. So, as today's fortune suggests, you needn't settle with the outcome of your struggles or try to find contentment with the results of your efforts. Don't marginalize or demote yourself when something sets off a letdown, fizzles out, or gets flubbed up. Instead, learn from each setback and prepare your mind for the next part of the journey.

Don't be disappointed with failures when they come, as they will teach, guide, and motivate you. If you were to win every time you tried something, what then would you have learned? The answer is nothing. As Bill Gates once said, "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose." He was absolutely right! If you are willing to learn something valuable from your failures, the lesson itself is a victory.

A career in marketing requires a great capacity for enduring many failures. We call it "testing". My team and I conduct thousands of tests every day for our clients, with the expectation that one part of our test will outperform another. We test different creatives, different messaging, different offers, and all of this within a dozen different marketing channels. When we see something that wins, we feed it and starve off the losers. You see, every time a test is successful, it is only known as such because something in the test was found to be less successful.

If you are as well-tuned for failure as we are, you will have learned how to fail quickly and can learn more rapidly than your competition. This is how we win for our clients. It's true. We know how to fail faster than anyone, and it helps them generate a higher volume of quality leads for much less money. You will achieve more for less because we've failed enough to find the best shortcuts and avoid more of the pitfalls. You've heard me say this before, but I believe that experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. It's true!

In closing, I just want to reiterate that whether you are a marketer who isn't hitting their lead generation numbers, a scientist trying to unlock the regenerative signaling pathway to cure diabetes, or a little twelve-year-old girl trying to master a tricky pirouette, do not fret when you fail. Dust yourself off, learn from your mistakes, and get back up. I still believe that failure is not the destination but rather a passageway to success, and as today's fortune says, "You don't become a failure until you're satisfied with being one."