If You’re Not Failing from Time to Time, You’re Not Trying Hard Enough

What this means is that if you are so hesitant to try something unless it’s a guaranteed win, you’re missing A LOT of opportunities. If you never try new recipes in your restaurant, you’re missing out on business. Not all will be home runs, but you’ll never have new hits if you don’t try new recipes, some of which just won’t work. If you do landscaping and don’t offer power washing, you’re probably missing out on some easy new business. And in that case, they help you upsell AND give you another income stream for the slower months. It might not end up being a big part of your business, and you may be so busy with other work that you stop offering the power washing altogether. But if you don’t even try it, you’ll never know if it’s an easy upsell, a whole new income stream on its own, or just something you tried that didn’t work out (in which case you can sell the power washer and get right back to work no worse for the wear).

This doesn’t mean to blindly try everything you can think of. You still need to be intentional and try things that have a reasonable chance of success and won’t kill your business if they don’t work out.

So think back to the last time you tried something and it failed. If you can’t think of any or it’s been a while, you need to adjust how risk-avoidant you’re probably being. Business takes risk and if you’re only swinging when you know you’ll hit a home run, you’re missing a lot of opportunities.