How to manage failure as a freelancer
Everybody fails.
The importance lies in how you react to failure and learning to bounce back after you’re fired, you lose a client, or your high tech sex toy company idea gets shot down.
This article pulls together some of the things discussed this year from certain tech leaders like Adeo Ressi (CEO of the Founder Institute), Anjali Sud (CEO of Vimeo), Rixt Herklots (Program Manager of The Next Women) and Sharmadean Reid (co-founder of Beautystack) about handling professional setbacks and failure.
I'm positively sure these thoughts will be useful in your freelancing career.
“Entrepreneurship is very hard. The best thing that you can do is believe in yourself and believe in your mission. No matter how hard things become, when you believe, anything is possible.”
“In particular, I wish I had moved faster to re-organize our internal teams to align with our refocused strategy on creators. It took me a few months to get there, when looking back I think we could have ripped off the band-aid and made those changes faster.”
She’s often spoken in interviews about how there’s never a right moment to undergo massive change, but it often has a big pay off.
“I think change is hard and scary, no matter if it’s in your personal or professional life. But there are times when you know in your gut that change is needed. You have the signals that the status quo isn’t working. When that happens, I always try to be willing and ready to change.”
“The harder thing is when you aren’t sure it’s time to change. In these moments, I try to bring it back to the higher purpose. When thinking about Vimeo, I ask ‘what is the right thing for our users? What is the best way for us to fulfill our mission to empower creators?’”
Rixt Herklots, Program Manager of The Next Women, said:
"As a matter of fact, I rarely do it, but being transparent about failures? Oh yes! There’s so much value in sharing your mistakes & missteps. Everyone should do it.”
“It’s so noisy out there, they probably won’t notice. It’s best to get things out. you’ll never learn if you don’t ship product. I release the first version of Beautystack months ago to a small group of 10 people just to get some feedback. It was so ugly it was embarrassing! But we found out quickly what worked and what didn’t. You need to build, ship, test and learn.”
The importance lies in how you react to failure and learning to bounce back after you’re fired, you lose a client, or your high tech sex toy company idea gets shot down.
This article pulls together some of the things discussed this year from certain tech leaders like Adeo Ressi (CEO of the Founder Institute), Anjali Sud (CEO of Vimeo), Rixt Herklots (Program Manager of The Next Women) and Sharmadean Reid (co-founder of Beautystack) about handling professional setbacks and failure.
I'm positively sure these thoughts will be useful in your freelancing career.
“You will be screwed and you will be humbled”
Adeo Ressi, the CEO of the Founder Institute, a startup launch program that operates in nearly 200 cities worldwide, once wrote:“As an entrepreneur, you will be screwed and you will be humbled. Over and over again.”
“Entrepreneurship is very hard. The best thing that you can do is believe in yourself and believe in your mission. No matter how hard things become, when you believe, anything is possible.”
What Vimeo’s CEO regrets
When asked what mistakes, Anjali Sud, CEO of Vimeo, replied:“Not moving fast enough.”
“In particular, I wish I had moved faster to re-organize our internal teams to align with our refocused strategy on creators. It took me a few months to get there, when looking back I think we could have ripped off the band-aid and made those changes faster.”
She’s often spoken in interviews about how there’s never a right moment to undergo massive change, but it often has a big pay off.
“I think change is hard and scary, no matter if it’s in your personal or professional life. But there are times when you know in your gut that change is needed. You have the signals that the status quo isn’t working. When that happens, I always try to be willing and ready to change.”
“The harder thing is when you aren’t sure it’s time to change. In these moments, I try to bring it back to the higher purpose. When thinking about Vimeo, I ask ‘what is the right thing for our users? What is the best way for us to fulfill our mission to empower creators?’”
Share — and celebrate — your mistakes
We are our own worst critics. So how do you move past mistakes and moments of failure?Rixt Herklots, Program Manager of The Next Women, said:
“Own of my biggest challenges is celebrating my accomplishments."
"As a matter of fact, I rarely do it, but being transparent about failures? Oh yes! There’s so much value in sharing your mistakes & missteps. Everyone should do it.”
No one’s gonna die if I release this and it’s a bit bad.
Sharmadean Reid, co-founder of Beautystack said:“It’s so noisy out there, they probably won’t notice. It’s best to get things out. you’ll never learn if you don’t ship product. I release the first version of Beautystack months ago to a small group of 10 people just to get some feedback. It was so ugly it was embarrassing! But we found out quickly what worked and what didn’t. You need to build, ship, test and learn.”
Wrapping Up
2019 will hold many successes, as well as many failures. Take this time to reflect back in 2018, and learn from mistakes.
About Daniel Vukasovich
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