Each failure is a "step" toward your success

... who said it?

After opening several new businesses this year, a friend said to me, "Well, since the other businesses you started were amazing, I figure any new business you open must be an incredible experience from the start.”

I had to hold back from laughing out loud.

Those "amazing" businesses that my friend referenced may appear that way from the outside, but from the inside you would see the daily conflict and the incredible amount of effort that it took to push the ball forward each day. The fact is, when it comes to opening a business, a great process and successful outcome don't happen from the start. Sure, it helps to have great people and prior experience, but those two factors alone do not guarantee immediate success.

When Amazing Begins as Chaos.

My first real business venture was as a solo real estate agent and then, months later, as the founder of The Brooks Group team at Keller Williams, which was later absorbed by Momentum Realty, the independent brokerage my wife and I opened in January 2020. And, yes, The Brooks Group has had “amazing” success, with hundreds of 5-star reviews from happy buyers and sellers. But to get to the point of having a brand associated with the 5-star experience, it took 24-36 months of grueling, 12-hour days (weekends included!) and making many mistakes before we finally figured out our best practices and then implemented them. 

If you had talked to me during the first year that I went into real estate, you would have laughed your butt off at how disorganized I was. Even later, when my wife and I partnered to build The Brooks Group, our systems, marketing, and scripts were awful. We didn't even know what it was we needed to know -- and we certainly had no one to go to for answers. But we did realize we needed mentors and coaches in order to get where we wanted to go, so we went out and found them. And, eventually, all those mistakes, with help from others’ feedback – positive and negative – brought into focus the best path forward for the phenomenal success The Brooks Group was able to achieve.

Embracing Feedback.

We actively sought feedback not only from our coaches, but also from our customers. Our system was simple: after each interaction with customers, we would request and receive feedback. Then we would analyze it and adjust to improve the customer experience. Implementation of enhancements was immediate, with improvements happening faster and faster as we became a 100% customer-centric model. Our feedback loop was insanely powerful. Further, as we added staff, we took the same approach, constantly seeking their candid feedback and utilizing it to make changes.

It's important to note that we were only able to get this feedback by creating a safe space for open dialogue, a permission to offer raw, unfiltered criticism. Without creating that sincere environment and constantly encouraging others’ assessments, we could not have improved at the rate we did. We wouldn't have known how to get better if we hadn’t asked for that data.

Teaching Others To Value Feedback.

Our willingness to seek feedback -- even tough, hard-to-hear feedback -- and utilize it to our advantage, has been a foundation for all our business ventures. In fact, as we moved forward with Momentum Realty, we coached our agent partners to adopt the same mindset. The fact is, talent-- those high-performing agents and staff that we partner with-- want that direct feedback because talent is always looking for ways to improve. But that does mean leaving Big Egos at the door. Big Egos don’t like negative feedback; when they get it, they focus inward instead of acknowledging the possibility that something could be improved. Over time, Big Ego can kill a top producer's business. But true talent can put Big Ego aside and consider whether the feedback is valid and worthy of responding with change.

This all sounds great, right? But, in truth, it is decidedly not easy to put your ego in check and accept negative feedback without getting your feelings hurt. It requires adopting the right perspective, and choosing how you react to negative feedback. If the feedback is valid, you have to see it as an opportunity for learning and change instead of fighting it. Our goal is to teach others to respond, and not to react.  

From the perspective of giving feedback – and I admittedly give more than I get – I believe it should be raw and unfiltered. For example, when I received feedback from a customer about one of our agents, and relayed it to that agent, I didn’t amplify or downplay it. I did prep the conversation and delivery for a positive response, but the actual feedback was unfiltered so that the agent could hear exactly what was said. If the feedback was filtered, it could reflect what I interpreted it to mean, and not what the customer actually meant. And that misinterpretation could have resulted in a failure to successfully resolve the core issue.

Should Feedback Bring Change for a Booming Business?

Clearly, the feedback loop is important for a new business to learn and adapt. But what about after your business is up and running? When things are going really well, should the business take more risks with continuing change?

I view it like this:

True entrepreneurs first want to build a strong foundation for a core business, but as profits grow, they expand to try micro experiments to see what does and doesn't work.

The world is your laboratory and you're constantly testing.

Yes, the majority of your experiments are likely going to fail, but you’ll never get to the ones that work without that failure, so you can’t be afraid to fail. You can't figure things out by doing nothing. So, start something, and if it doesn’t work, tweak it or shut it down. That's how you learn and grow. It's the basic process for success: fail, then learn, and try again.

Responding Quickly To Feedback.

I have received feedback (including from my own team) that I move too fast in taking feedback and running with it to make change. But the more I learn about top performers in various industries, the more I see they are willing to move fast, even change their mind on a dime, if they come across new and valid information.

Some might criticize that,  but others see the value of responding quickly in our ever-changing, never-sleep world. 

The bottom line is, the decisions you make are based on information you receive at the time of making that decision. But if things change and you later receive different information, you may well make a different decision based on that new information, right? When you test a new product, system, or idea, you solicit and examine feedback, then decide what to do from there. And you must move quickly, because the rate of change is happening ever faster; pivoting directions is critical.

Consider this example: a rocket doesn't launch and automatically land on the moon. There are thousands of micro-tweaks made along the way to ensure it actually gets to the moon. No one gets upset about the micro-tweaks as long as they understand that everyone is just trying to get to the moon. Instead, they celebrate the tweaks because that rocket may not have reached the moon without them. They are committed to the outcome, not the process.  

My wife and I take the same approach in business. Our chances of success are much higher because we are very open to a feedback loop, and don't take things personally. We are committed to the outcome; the process is malleable. For us, that outcome is what the customer wants, so we figure out what exactly that is, and furiously move toward providing it. Then we consider our feedback, and think about what they could possibly want next. At the end of the day, the customer is our North Star. And being proactive to continue giving them the best service is what puts us on the front-lines of the business wars, instead of trailing behind to catch up.

Success Stories.

History is filled with examples of people who experimented, failed, got lots of feedback, sometimes were called crazy, and then succeeded in astounding ways:

Abraham Lincoln lost his job, failed in business, had a mental breakdown, lost local nominations, ran for Senate and lost, ran for Vice President and lost, again ran for Senate and lost—until he was elected president in 1860 and became one of the most impactful presidents in history. He just kept going.

Albert Einstein divorced, lost his children, became physically ill due to stress, never did well in school, had his research interrupted by two World Wars, was unwillingly linked with the atomic bomb, and spent decades defending his work to his colleagues. But when asked about failure, Einstein said, "I didn't fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps... great success is built on failure, frustration, and even catastrophe."

What a refreshing attitude.

Failure, Feedback, Success.

My point is this: We all fail. The key is to view each failure as a "step" toward your success. Failure provokes feedback, and feedback offers an opportunity for learning, making changes, and trying again. When you stop experimenting out of fear, judgement, or other outside pressures, you fail by default. Pursue your mission relentlessly; it's time to re-cast the vision and get after it.