There is great truth in the quote which has sometimes been attributed to actress Ilka Chase that “the only people who have never failed are those who have never tried.”

All of us can think back to moments in our lives where we have had to fail at  least once if not several times before we were successful at something.  When we are children (or so it seems) we are more intent on succeeding at things. But as the years pass many of us become habitual comfort seekers afraid to break with routine and do those things we once dreamed.

The good news is that for those willing to risk failure and take action the rewards can be great. Conversely, those unwilling to take action, (regardless of the reasons) can resign themselves to a life of adequacy.

In my life I have found that even the smallest effort on my part yields significant benefits even in failure. In my journey as a marketer for instance, I have found that even the best sales copy will fail when marketers fail to understand their markets. An understanding that came to me through failure, this revelation has saved me untold amounts of time and money which I may have otherwise wasted creating products for markets which I failed to understand.

Another example of a failure that that I benefited from in terms of both business and personal development came from a time when even though I had a good understanding of my market I failed to test the market’s demand for my product. My failure in that instance could have been easily prevented with something as simple as getting on the phone and talking to a hundred or so people, or conducting an online survey.

What I learned from that mistake is that even if you know your market you can’t always make assumptions about all their wants and needs. At best, I am only one person and though I may have been my in my target market, I was still only one person in that market and hardly representative of all the possible individuals in that market. I also learned that marketers need to connect with their markets personally if at all possible. Simply put, if you want to know the market get out there and talk with the market.

On a personal development level the understanding that I need to connect with my markets on a personally also means that I have to communicate with others. Doing so opens me up to a broad spectrum of human experience. Experience which I can learn and grow from as a human.

The point is that without these actions I may not have learned these important lessons. Even if on some level the actions resulted in failure.

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