FAILING MIGHT ACTUALLY BE WINNING

Did you know a three thousand dollar mattress is made for about three hundred dollars?

I’m no mathematician, but I know those are some dang good margins.

And that’s about all I knew when my husband and I decided to start a side business.

We worked with a company that had a great business model.

We saw lots of other people in the company making lots of money.

We took out a good sized loan, leased a warehouse, placed some ads on Facebook, and waited for the money to roll in.

But it didn’t take long for us to see that selling mattresses was not a side gig. It was a full time job and neither of us had the time or the passion to grow it.

One year after we opened, the market took a downturn and that’s when we decided to cut our losses and close the business.

Fifty thousand dollars in debt.

We were mad (the nicest way to say it).

Mad at ourselves for thinking this was a good idea.

Mad about thinking God had given us a stamp of approval.

Mad about the time, the money, and the effort we wasted trying to make it work.

We spent a lot of years blaming the company.

We spent lots of years writing checks to pay off the debt.

Looking back we would have changed a lot of things, but the biggest thing we would have changed is our minds.

Because we didn’t know then what we know now.

Now we know that people who are willing to FEEL and people who are willing to FAIL are the people who can have anything they want.

[If you want a great read on feeling go here]

Right now let’s talk about FAILING.

Let’s talk about the possibility of not being afraid to fail.

What if we could try new things without worrying so. much about the future?

What if we looked at all the information from the past as simple data?

What if we studied our wins and losses and didn’t judge ourselves or anyone else for them?

What if we thought about the things we’d do again, the things we wouldn’t do, and didn’t make a big deal about any of it?

If we looked at it like this, we might see that that failing might not be failing at all.

It might actually be winning.

Look,

Oprah was fired from a news station because the producer thought she wasn’t good on TV.

Hilarious.

JK Rowling had twelve major publishes turn down her script before she sold over four million copies of Harry Potter.

Fascinating.

Henry Ford had two failed business and filed bankruptcy before he went on to be the owner of Ford Motor Company.

Absolutely crazy.

What if we lightened up about failure just a bit?

What if we allowed failure to be our teacher?

What if we didn’t let failure stop us?

What if we allowed failure to propel us to get the one thing we want more than anything else in our lives?

Good news.

Todd and I learned a lot from the mattress biz.

We learned what we are and aren’t willing to do.

We learned what we are capable of and what we will always hire other capable people to do.

We learned what questions to ask and who to ask them to.

We learned how to look at money and debt in a completely different way.

We learned more about God and His plan of happiness for our family.

And…..

Every night when we lay on our fifty thousand dollar mattress, we dream about the next big thing for our family.

We dream about a charming little cottage. We dream about the piece of land we’re going to build it on. We dream about the fruit trees, the garden, the barn, and the animals.

I can see it in my mind. It’s stunning.

We have no doubt we’ll get to experience our dream, because we’re willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen,

and we’re willing and learn from everything that happens along the way.

Are you afraid to go for your dreams?

I can help you get anything you want, and I mean anything.




photo by Andrea Piacquadio

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