If you’re not doing this, you’re not trying

It’s that feeling you try to avoid at all costs. The one where you sit and line out all of the risks, the pros, and cons of every scenario. You solve for all the outcomes you can possibly think of, you talk yourself in circles about what you would do if this happens or if that occurs to a point of exhaustion. But even after all of that planning, it doesn’t work.

In fact, it outright fails.

Failure can be mentally paralyzing. It can keep you from making some of the best decisions and most impactful changes of your life. Particularly when it comes to your business. Risk is scary. Failing seems…well, like the end.

But what if failure was necessary for growth? For improvement? For the best to actually arrive?
Fellow designer and lead visual creative director for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Lee Enterprises Design Center Director, Carlos Ayulo, leads design by this simple rule:

If you’re not failing, you’re not trying.

I couldn’t agree more.

Carlos was speaking of design risk, which speaks into our life at Fierce so easily. We put all the effort, time, creativity, talent, and love into our work even if we’re unclear if it will be deemed successful or not. (That’s why we have versions, sketches, storyboards and make time for revisions!) We are not scared of looking-a-fool or having a bad idea. We’re not scared of being wrong. In the creative realm, that’s important. It’s in all of those wrongs that we find the right.

To be an entrepreneur or to start a new venture or campaign, you have to be willing to jump (often without a working parachute). Jump even when the landing is uncertain, the financials are foggy, and the fear of all of what you don’t know you don’t know, immobilizes you.

If you’re not failing, you’re not trying.

Stop playing it safe. Stop talking yourself out of hiring that business partner, opening that business, or sharing your concept with an investor. Stop thinking it’s all going to fail. Maybe it will! Maybe it should. All so you can make something better.

Keep trying. Keep failing. Keep learning. Keep improving.

If you need a partner for that risk-taking type of thinking or to get over the hurdle of that paralyzing fear of failure, call us. We’ll jump with you – parachute or not. Let’s try, let’s fail, and then let’s making something amazing.