E-GUIDE RECAP a Swing and a Miss

E-GUIDE RECAP A Swing and A Miss

By Jim Brown

Jim Brown kicked things off at FailFest 2015 by sharing the story of Haven, which he calls “the biggest professional failure of [his] career.” After legendary successes with Slingshot SEO and Compendium, Jim and two friends raised just over $1M in Indiana in 60 days based on little more than a pitch deck.

Fast forward a few months, and that money was lost forever. Jim ascribes this failure to the unexpected complexity of building his home maintenance app, to the limited work they did to test their assumptions, and to an extremely high burn rate that left little runway for the business to take off.

For Jim, the prospect of undeniable failure weighed on him heavily, and fear became a big part of his life. Fear that he’d lose his investors’ money. Fear that he’d find himself financially ruined. Fear that his career as he knew it was over. But, as it turns out, a supportive community can mean the difference between ultimate failure and an ongoing journey toward success. Today, Jim has lived through failure and found that his fears were far from the reality he’d face on the other side.

JIM’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

Don’t confuse the failure of a business with your own ultimate failure. Your personal reputation absolutely can and will survive.

A supportive community is an absolute must for any entrepreneur. You can’t go it alone in success or in failure, and a support network will help you make it through either scenario.

Founders often go without sufficient (or sometimes any) compensation. After a failure, it’s okay to take a step back from entrepreneurship to make some money and refill your coffers.

Failure brings with it fear of becoming damaged goods. One failure doesn’t mean you either have to quit trying altogether or, alternately, go bigger and bolder with your next plan to prove you’ve still got it. Failure As a Tactical Tool

By Scott McCorkle

Today, Scott McCorkle is the CEO of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, but his career wasn’t a direct trajectory to the top. He began his venture into the tech space on the other side of the big .com bubble, where rapid success at Software Artistry (Indiana’s first publicly traded tech company) led to an acquisition by IBM. In 1999, Scott founded his own company, Mezzia, during a time when founding a tech company may not have been such a great idea. By 2005, Scott had joined ExactTarget and begun his direct path to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, but he shares that even in all the success ExactTarget has enjoyed, failure has still not been a stranger.

The ultimate lesson from Scott’s journey, through both failure and what he calls “non-failure”, is that failure can come from many places, including our own mistakes, the mistakes of others, and things that just break and there’s nothing we can do about it. With Mezzia, he moved forward raising large amounts of money based not on an understanding of the market, demand for product, or even pricing, but on their own reputation; chalk that up as a Scott mistake. At ExactTarget, some of that same ignorance featured, despite a very solid understanding of the product and its market. To get answers to some questions about product development and scale, the only way to go was to push the team to its limits, fail, and learn from it. To that end, failure can be a very effective tactical tool.

SCOTT’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

The line between great success and terrible failure is very narrow. Keep in mind that it’s possible to go back and forth across that line without knowing which side you’re on.

It’s critical that as an entrepreneur, you acknowledge what you’ll fail at–maybe it’s finance, or marketing, or sales–and surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.

There are some things you just can’t know. If you’re not sure how to price a product, or how much capacity you have, or what your development plan should be, one way to learn is to push it until something breaks, then learn from that intentional failure.

Culture is the only way to make sure a company explicitly understands how to handle mistakes and move past failures. Untitled Failure By Dante Ventresca

A big part of FailFest’s purpose is to get the Indianapolis entrepreneurial scene together and promote new, diverse successes out of meaningful collaboration. As the founder of the Theater of Inclusion, Dante Ventresca understands fully just how key collaborative culture is to a company’s success. The Theater of Inclusion is a small company focused on working with groups to help them flesh out what collaboration is, to demystify the creative process, and to foster a positive internal culture,

Much of Dante’s presentation focused on the concept of inspiration, and how cru- cial it is for entrepreneurs to understand their own gut feelings and visceral sources of ideas, both good and bad. As he constructed a tower doomed to fail on stage in front of FailFest attendees, Dante invited entrepreneurs to think of themselves as creatives, whose ideas may not make sense at first either to themselves or to those closest to them. What’s important, though, is that creatives and entrepreneurs alike continue to build, elicit feedback, and open themselves up to failures as one idea or another just doesn’t pan out. Out of the many ideas that are wadded up and thrown out, Dante promises, something unique and powerful is sure to emerge.

This is a concept Theater of Inclusion aims to reinforce with the teams they work with, using similar illustrations as Dante’s building of the tower. Using simple materials to build prototypes, a team can practice making mistakes and testing doomed ideas as a method for collaborating better and working towards bigger goals as a cohesive group.

DANTE’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

* Feedback is vital. Even if you know your collaborators or partners don’t have your entire vision front-of- mind, their feedback can help you throw away parts of your ideas that don’t work, so you can focus on the parts that do.

* Always be mindful of the realities of your life that led to your ideas in the first place. Your experiences will give you a unique perspective on the problems you hope to solve, and can be a valuable asset when others fail to understand the finer details of your business plan.

* We may be talking about business at FailFest, but entrepreneurship is a deeply personal phenomenon. It’s okay to own that. If your passion and your big ideas don’t translate well to a business plan at first, it’s not a failure to live with some unknowns and let your passion continue to motivate you. The key is to keep track of your failures so you can build upon them in the future. The Worst Acquisition Ever!

By Jay Love

Some colossal failures begin as monumental successes. Alternately, even those colossal failures can eventually lead to monumental successes, too. This is absolutely true for Jay Love, who saw a software company he worked for in 1987 be acquired to great effect by a company out of Boston named Epsilon Data Management. For ten years, the two teams collaborated beautifully, eventually leading to Jay’s promotion to CEO of the team in Indianapolis. But such success, before long, caught the eye of other companies, and eventually they were faced with another acquisition. Only this time, the buyer wasn’t interested in keeping a satellite office staffed.

With the immediate layoff of the entire office in Indianapolis, Jay was left with a choice: stay on with the new company and enter corporate life, or strike out on his own in Indy and form a startup. So, in 1999, at a time when the Internet was still something of a gimmick in the public’s eye, Jay found himself with a web application for the nonprofit sector called eTapestry. This proved to be a good move for Jay, who has gone on to find much success in the nonprofit world to this day with Bloomerang and Launch Cause.

JAY’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

* Remember the “Law of Sacrifice”: to obtain something of greater value, you must always give up something of lesser value.

* Surround yourself with likeminded people. When you get people together with a shared passion and shared perspective, it’s easier to create a culture that will lead to success. One Part Early Success, Two Parts Youth and Naivety, a Dash of Arrogance…Shake Well and Serve up a $1 Million Failure

By Scott Wise

Sometimes, the reality of failure is in the eye of the beholder. To Scott Wise, founder of Scotty’s Bre- whouse and Thr3e Wise Men Brewing Company, the word “failure” isn’t any good at all; he prefers “opportunity.”

Scott’s story of entrepreneurship began all the way back when he was just 12 years old. The idea was simple: dip toothpicks in cinnamon oil to give them flavor, and sell them at school for $0.15 a pop. They sold like hotcakes until third period, when the administration shut down school due to an outbreak of rashes stemming from the cinnamon oil in the toothpicks. Failure #1 was in the books almost as quickly as the business got started.

Failure #2 in Scott’s business life came, ironically, when he found too much success with his first Scot- ty’s Brewhouse location at the age of 22. His confidence in his own entrepreneurial skills from the incredible success of his first restaurant led quickly to the opening of a second (a different concept), which didn’t fare as well. Only three years into his venture, Scott had lost $1,000,000 and found himself struggling to pay his employees or keep the doors open.

While Scott eventually parlayed the failure of the second restaurant into a successful second Scotty’s Brewhouse location, but the 2008 recession brought more challenges that could have been failures, but instead presented new opportunities for Scott to challenge himself. Less capital for marketing led to creative use of social media, which eventually became a significant part of Scott’s brand. Loose management agreements led to immediate failures, but also have strengthened the business’s long term strategy.

With each new potential failure, these pivots help make Scott a stronger, more experienced, and more equipped entrepreneur.

SCOTT’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

Every failure is an opportunity. You can choose to let failure be your downfall, or you can take it as a bump in the road and learn a new way to react and act.

There is such a thing as too much success. Don’t bite off more than you can chew, or you’ll find yourself losing control of your situation.

If you can share what you’ve learned from your failures, do it. Creating a culture that’s focused on bettering everyone on the team will lead to both immediate and long-term success for everybody involved. The Risk of Falling Drives Innovation

By Santiago Jaramillo

Trying and failing is something that Santiago has been experiencing for a long time. When he was in college, he created a dorm storage business which failed because of a lack of budgeting. He failed several times at creating a kids summer music camp before finally turning it into a successful venture. After dropping-out of a study abroad program in Australia, he got involved with ExactTarget, where he worked until his latest business idea came to him: a company that would create smartphone apps for businesses.

That company, now called Bluebridge, got its start after a long stretch of struggling. By building apps around the Indianapolis Super Bowl, he earned his first client. From there, he’s grown the company into a giant business that serves many destinations and townships. With over 10 million total downloads of the apps he’s created, it’s safe to say that those failures all lead to an eventual success. If at first you don’t succeed, keep trying!

SANTIAGO’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

If you double the number of experiments you do in a year, you will double your inventiveness. Entrepreneurs are always finding new ways to build businesses, and they’re doing it because they’re constantly trying out new things.

Put yourself out there and take the risk of falling. Those who have a ‘why,’ have the wherewithal to be successful.

Find what drives you. That something is what will allow you to keep going tomorrow, past yesterday’s failures. Suffer Cheerfully

By Brad Wisler

Like many entrepreneurs, Brad Wisler has a track record of serial entrepreneurship. Since founding SproutBox, a Bloomington-based incubator, he’s gotten a front-row seat to the birth, growth, and sometimes death of over 30 startups. He’s even started his own, Periodic. And in that time, Brad has learned a lot about what makes some startups succeed and others fail. Some say startups fail when the money runs out, but Brad boils failure down to one thing: enthusiasm.

The only difference between a brand new startup with no money and a “failing” startup with no money is the enthusiasm of the founder to build it, grow it, and stick with it through thick and thin.

Brad shared a few stories that embody this concept from his years of experience at SproutBox. First, he outlined the story of Dingora, an app envisioned as a Netflix spe- cifically for Bollywood films. The founder’s enthusiasm was infectious, but when his personal life pulled him out of the business, SproutBox’s enthusiasm to keep the business alive couldn’t match the founder’s enthusiasm for the business itself. Next, Brad discussed ScheduleThing, a real-time commerce app that failed to meet expectations. And while initial enthusiasm clouded the app’s true value, eventually the elements of it that worked were spun off into the Periodic platform, which remains successful to this day. Finally, he talked about Earbits, an independent music streaming app that was set to compete with giants like Pandora. While the team couldn’t find the capital they needed to compete, their passion kept them hanging on until an acquisition offer came through.

It’s that tenacity of a founder to not give up when times are tough that turn potential failures into ultimate successes.

BRAD’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

* If you quit, you’ll never be there for your big break. Quitting is the only surefire way to guarantee that failure is permanent.

* It’s easy to mistake the concept of “passion” for “excitement,” but it’s a word more strongly associated with “suffering.” When investors talk about looking for passionate founders, what they’re really looking for is someone who is willing to suffer for their idea, to fail and keep smiling and move on to the next thing. Failure Is Always an Option

By Dave Wortman

Fear can be a crippling enemy to face in the world of entrepreneurship. Dave Wortman, CEO & Co-Founder of Diagnotes, Inc., learned at an early age that he had nothing to fear but fear itself. His entrepreneurial spirit showed even as a child, when he built a successful lawn mowing business. Before long, he found himself fascinated with computers and decided to build a software company back when personal computers weren’t really a thing yet. What catapulted him forward, however, was his mother’s advice: “Go for it. What do you have to lose?”

With that confident perspective in hand, Dave threw himself headlong into developing software for the then brand new Apple II, the first true personal computer. His failure here was one of being too cutting edge; the software he’d developed was for business, and Apple II never saturated the business market. But this first failure dovetailed nicely into an immediate follow-up success when his team decided to scrap the first application, take the same basic idea, and build it for IBM PCs. In that sense, Dave’s ability to knowingly call his first project a failure is what made the whole endeavor, ultimately, a huge success.

This attention to platforms, to the true market for a product, and to data’s ability to signal the right time for an exit has woven throughout Dave’s entire career, whether it’s pulling out of a VC firm during the 2008 recession, or dumping an acquired platform to start from scratch and approach the market from a new perspective.

DAVE’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

Let the data inform your decisions. If you’re ready to quit, monitor the results of your work so you make an informed decision either to call it a failure and move on, or to keep pushing forward.

Let go of fear. Ultimately, it gets in the way of smart decisions and good opportunities. Culture is Your Weapon Against True Failure

By Chris Byers

Chris Byers, current CEO of Formstack, became an entrepreneur right out of college, when he and four of his buddies decided to start a web-based software development company, Bottled Software. In 1999, that was a hot business, but the company still failed. Chris attributes this to two factors: lack of leadership and lack of vision. When five friends get together in a room to make a decision it’s tough enough, but when your only goal is to make money, it becomes almost impossible.

When Chris finally came to Formstack in 2010, he had all these elements of failure—leadership, vision, and culture—in the back of his mind. He saw in a few years that people were confused on a deeper level about why the company ex- isted. Sure, they made software, but what was the point? After getting some tips from a business coach, Chris developed a why statement, a vision statement, and a culture code for the whole company. These elements came in handy last year; when Formstack had zero revenue growth in a fiscal year, Chris used those tools to lead through that failure and divide the company into two, more agile depart- ments focused on specific target customers.

CHRIS’ TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

Default to transparency in tough situations. It can be tempting to bottle up emotions and put on a happy face, but eventually that will have serious consequences.

Don’t wait for others to tell you how to recover from failure. Be agile and iterate a solution.

Remember: money is not a measure of your worth. You can always find more money, but your innate talents and abilities are yours to rely on for life.

Develop a “why statement” for your business to keep you focused when things go wrong. Why are you in business? What do you hope to provide or achieve for your

customers on a grand scale? Don’t Pivot Like Jared

By Susan Marshall

At FailFest, Susan wanted to talk not just about failure, but how we recover from it— the art of the pivot. Especially in the digital age, companies have made billions by understanding how and when to change their approach to the market. YouTube, for example, started as a dating website where people would upload videos to attract one another. That was a bust, but the company noticed that footage of silly stunts was popular among users. And so, YouTube was born through a successful pivot.

Susan found she had to master the pivot early in Torchlite’s lifespan. After six months in business, a lot of mistaken assumptions they’d made about their target market were revealed. They’d focused too strongly on franchise owners who didn’t have the necessary decision making power to use Torchlite’s digital marketing service. They set their price point far too low. And their desire to educate and empower their clients led them to put way too much back-end information in front of the customer.

Susan credits the company’s ability to change strategies and survive these rocky beginnings to its culture. An enterprise where innovation is rewarded and encouraged is one which will be able to pivot more easily. If employees are afraid of change or unable to adapt, failure is almost guaranteed.

SUSAN’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

When you find yourself in a position which demands a pivot, follow the lead of your customers.

Don’t villainize failure: make sure your employees know it’s okay to make mistakes.

Challenge your own assumptions and grow from what you find. The Financial Impact of Failure

By Peter Dunn

Peter Dunn, also known as Pete the Planner, knows failure is inevitable for all of us. But financial failure, he thinks, is far more avoidable than we might believe. For him, financial failure all comes down to behavior. As a stand-up comedian, of course he couldn’t resist making a hilarious analogy: we treat money the way we treat toilet paper. When there’s a lot of it available to us, we use more than we need and don’t think about it. But when there’s only a few scraps, suddenly we become creative to get the most we can from the small resources at hand. As entrepreneurs experience success, their behavior changes. However, Pete emphasized that your behavior is truly the only thing you can fully control in this life.

So what happens when you fail? Many people panic about their credit score taking a hit, but Pete says your credit score is a lot less important than you think. If you fail financially, what’s the reason you want to improve your credit score? Well, to borrow more money of course—but that’s revisiting the source of your original failure. Pete says your net worth is a far more reliable indicator of how you’re doing financially.

PETE’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

Don’t let your failure be a result of your behaviors alone. Hold yourself accountable to your goals.

Communicate about financial issues or concerns before they- over whelm you. Reactive money conversations are terrible.

Be mindful of your behavior in times of abundance versus times of scarcity. Lessons from the Edge of Reality

By Jenny Vance Jenny Vance decided in 2013 that she would take a risk and participate in a reality television series centered around startups. At the time she had been developing an app, Plan Soon, for a little more than a year. The app was intended to bring people with similar interests together at times which worked for them—find a running buddy with a dog at 5 am, or someone else who is really good at tennis to meet you at the YMCA every Tuesday. She knew that the reality series, Venture Camp, would provide a lot of publicity for the app if everything went perfectly. Of course, it didn’t. The show didn’t even get picked up. But Jenny did well in the competition, made it to the final three, and learned a lot about pitching and her product.

Outside the show, Jenny was grateful during her work on Plan Soon to meet with a lot of investors, but what she didn’t anticipate was the way their feedback would influence her app. All the investors she met with were B2B investors with limited understanding of how a consumer offering differs from B2B. She found herself trying to prove out revenue, not focused on user acquisition or finding ways to show how users mean value. She took too much feedback and found herself essentially force-pivoted by the advice of others. Further, she spent way too much time trying to perfect too many features.

If she could do it all again, Jenny would cut two-thirds of the app’s features, and claim her own seat at the table. She would also ask some new questions. Does this investor usually support projects like mine? Are they willing to invest early on? If that investor isn’t on board, Jenny emphasized that entrepreneurs have the right to ask questions and ask for introductions to those who might be interested.

JENNY’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

Begin any project with the end in mind, and account for all outcomes. It’s easy to dream about the best outcome, but you also need to prepare for the worst one.

Seek leadership, don’t wait for it to be handed to you. When you fail, take responsibility for the situation.

Don’t take your failure as a reflection of your personal worth or value. Failing Well

By Jason Tennenhouse

Jason Tennenhouse, owner of 10 IN HOUSE Strategy & Design, has failed in major ways during his life. When he was a kid he filled his home with chlorine gas. He once put his own cell phone number on a client’s national print media campaign. He sent a coworker to the hospital during the process of developing a new toy gun. The list goes on. In fact, Jason once sat down and made a list of every major decision he ever made, and then wrote next to it if he found his expected outcome or not. 90% of the time, he failed to achieve the goal he expected.

But then Jason made a third column—did the new outcome he didn’t expect lead him somewhere he was glad to end up? The answers were almost all yes. Even though he failed in his short-term plans, the long-term effect of those failures was positive. Jason shared that he’s come to see failures as the natural evolution of a person’s attempts to serve something greater than themselves. Anything worth doing well takes more than one human lifetime to accomplish. Yet when we look at the present, everything seems broken.

Jason says reframing challenges as opportunities is the key to failing forward. Once, his team was very against the consequences of a decision that had been reached. Everyone came into a meeting room and made a list of all the reasons they thought the decision was bad and would lead to failure. Jason said, “We’re doing it anyway—and here’s the list of our challenges.” Then, the team brainstormed how to overcome them.

JASON’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

Own your failures when they happen, clearly and completely.

Ask for help. This is one many people overlook or feel ashamed about, but if there’s one thing to take away from FailFest, it’s that at one point or another, we’re all in need of help.

Do the best you can, but know that that’s all you can do. Make sure your clients or business partners know the same.

Reframe negatives as positives and adapt. Don’t let the immediate challenges overwhelm you into inaction. The Entrepreneurial Museum

By Ellen Rosenthal

Ellen Rosenthal knows how you probably think about Conner Prairie. A place for fourth- grade field trips and summer symphonies. But ten years ago when she became president of Conner Prairie, her goal was to change that. Around 2007, she and her team came up with the notion of broadening the umbrella of history captured at Conner Prairie. In particular, Ellen wanted to move the living museum beyond the daily life of 1836 and introduce STEM education in a historical context. After success integrating an electrostatic museum and a re- enactment of the first air mail delivery in 1859, Ellen decided to take it bigger—a year-round series of interactive exhibits which would unite science and history.

The team at Conner Prairie began planning, and hired a team of consultants to conduct a feasibility study with investors. Just when they were starting to talk to contractors and lay out a timeline to start building the exhibits, the consultants came back and told them no one was interested in investing.

Ellen attributes this failure to the team’s struggle to rebrand Conner Prairie. The investors, all in their 60s or older, knew Conner Prairie as a living museum people went to once or twice, not a center for learning and growth. The proposed exhibits disrupted not just the Conner Prairie brand, but many people’s understanding of history and science. Ellen says it simply may have been too soon for this level of innovation at the museum.

ELLEN’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

Revisit old ideas at a later time—just because it didn’t work now, doesn’t mean it won’t ever work.

Widen your umbrella and consider all the ways you could achieve a single goal. If one strategy failed, find another one. Ellen went to the

National Science Foundation and got the money she needed to implement the project differently.

Don’t give in to the pressures of tradition. Just because people define your business a certain way doesn’t mean you have to conform to that in your practices. Student Health Center

By Dr. Allen Bourff

As Superintendent of Hamilton Southeastern Schools, Allen Bourff always has the needs of the community on his mind. Back when he was the superintendent of the schools in Richmond, Indiana, there were a lot of needs on his plate. Richmond was struggling against poverty and rising obesity and health issues, along with declining enrollment and graduation rates. After a flash of success in 2011, Allen knew something big needed to happen. The community needed to trust the school system again.

Then, Allen noticed a building owned by the school corporation on the city’s south side, which was a medical services desert. Residents of that area had no access even to a clinic, let alone a doctor’s office. The strain on the local ER was evident, and one of the top reasons for student absenteeism was illness. Allen and the school board decided to get innovative, and proposed using one of their vacant buildings in the area as a health clinic. They partnered with the local hospital and even got a $500,000 grant from the federal government. Then, it all fell through.

The group had failed to include one of the stakeholders in the conversation—a community clinic in competition with the hospital. Their concerns about losing revenue came up at the worst possible moment. The existing clinic was unable to see through the short-term loss to appreciate the long-term gain the new clinic would bring the community. Further, many in the community felt the grant gave the clinic a tie to the federal government they didn’t trust. Allen wishes today that the school board had made a formal vote, not just discussed the plan, and that they’d done more to empathize with those who might suffer loss as a result of their project.

ALLEN’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

Recognize the difference between conversation and commitment. If something needs to be formalized, get it in writing or take a vote.

Be willing to compromise to find common ground. Often, the line between rational knowledge and emotional investment can be blurred. You might know the facts, but the other person might hold their opinion regardless.

Intentionally include the people who are most resistant to your change in the planning process. That means you can work through their opposition and try to get them on board. A Setback is a Set-Up, for a Comeback!

By Bob Logan

Before starting K12 Mobility, Bob Logan was put to the test starting Nextel’s first retail store in Indiana. While he saw some successes with the venture, it ultimately went under when Bob expanded to Chicago and Louisville. After that venture, Bob reengineered his career goals, and set his sights on providing electronic devices to students across the country that live in at risk, low-income areas. By refocusing his efforts on serving communities, Bob found success. K12 Mobility is now a successful company that partners with many large corporations, like Verizon, T-Mobile, Google, and more.

BOB’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

Failure is a reality, but you can do something about it.

When the ball comes to you, would you pass it to a better player, stand there and let the time run out, or take the shot yourself?

Failure doesn’t define who you are. It’s all about how you handle the situations you are presented with. Taking the shot means you will see failures, but if you can regroup and learn from your mistakes, then you’ll be stronger for it. Failure - A Reactive Process

By Danielle McDowell

Danielle McDowell opened her talk by explaining that failure doesn’t define us , but is very much a definitive part of who we are. The important part of failure is how you deal with it and move on; that reaction is what is definitive, not the failure itself.

Danielle shared with us a story of Loxa Beauty, a beauty supply website she took to the national level of success. Then, she walked away. Seeing the company grow into a large, successful one was an accomplishment, but after she sold the company, the culture changed, and her passion with it. This was unforeseeable when she chose to sell. Instead of looking at this evolution of her company as a failure, she’s channeled what she learned about herself to spin her career into a new direction. Now, she’s the executive director of the Speak Easy, one of Indianapolis’ most successful and well-known co-working spaces. There, she curates a culture by which she and other entrepreneurs can continue to be inspired.

DANIELLE’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

We are the accumulation of our success and our failures together. We are not defined by one or the other, but by how they both exist in our lives and how we move forward with them.

Failure is formative in creating the best version of yourself. We should always be looking at all aspects of ourselves and working forward with growth in mind.

You get to define what failure is in your story and how you weave it into the fabric of who you are. When Failure Meets Tenacity

By Thaddeus Rex

Now the owner and CEO of Thaddeus Rex, Inc., a brand consulting firm, Thaddeus spent a large part of his adult life touring the country as a musician. Thaddeus shared a few stories from his musical career that served to be lessons learned about serving others. This lesson of service carries into his work today—as a brand consultant, he has to put his own opinions aside and focus on the well-being of his clients first.

As a travelling musician, Thaddeus faced the potential for failure every time he walked on stage, and made the best of it. Once, a venue didn’t support him as the star of the show and left him to scramble everything together on his own. Another time, his 1,200 seat venue ended up hosting only one family of four.

Thaddeus learned early not to take these challenges as reflections of his own worth, just circumstances he couldn’t control and had to adapt to. Today, he helps his clients adapt and vitalize their brands with the same tenacity.

THADDEUS’ TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

It’s not about me, it’s about them. As a brand consultant, Thaddeus takes this sentiment into every aspect of his work.

The plan never works out. No matter how hard we might plan ahead, we really don’t know how everything is going to unravel.

Thaddeus challenges us: What is it that you have to give? What can you offer to make tomorrow better? Shattering the Failure Myth

By Jim Hallet

Jim Hallet opened up his talk with a little myth breaking: It doesn’t matter where you come from. As a child, Jim lived an impoverished life, but because of his success in sports, he was able to both attend and graduate from college. He’d been told his whole life he would fail due to his background, but challenged those illusions and found success. It didn’t just happen, though; it took dedication, timing, and a strong vision.

After he graduated from college, he immediately started working in the auto industry selling cars. Sales is a job with many small day-to-day failures and setbacks, but Jim persisted. He quickly became one of Canada’s top sales representatives. From this position, he saw a need for an auto auction house in Ottawa, and capitalized on it when the time was right. He left his job selling cars for others, and started the auto auction house ADESA, today one of North America’s premier auto auctioneers. Jim currently serves as CEO and Chairman of the Board for Kar Auction Services.

JIM’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

Create the vision. In Jim’s mind, a vision is something that you can touch, feel, and explain to somebody. When you can have a full vision, right down to small details, and can get people to rally behind it, you can do anything.

Speed is everything. For all of Jim’s successes, he’s had the right speed. For all of his failures, he didn’t have enough. When you can match your speed with your decisiveness, then you can go far. How Following My Mom’s Advice Led to Failure

By Katie Culp

Katie Culp serves as a partner and President of KSM Advisors, but she wasn’t always a pro at talking the talk. Even with her many successes today , she still remembers the discomfort she felt talking about money with clients when she entered the private sector as a consultant. She could sell clients passionately about the work she envisioned and how important it was, but would often gloss over the details about reimbursement for her projects.

But at the end of the year, Katie found herself in a crunch. Since she hadn’t discussed timelines or reimbursement schedules with her clients in the beginning, she now found herself having conversations more difficult than the others would have been. When the clients were invoiced, they weren’t expecting the expense and reacted defensively. In the end, not having clear and ongoing conversations about money and fees did a real disservice to both herself and her clients.

KATIE’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

Don’t avoid discomfort now to invite more later. This sentiment extends to many sectors— whether it’s a conflict with a coworker, questions about computer which make you feel silly, or talks about money, putting them off usually only increases the risk they’ll go wrong.

It’s not personal. Katie would often see push-back on fees and payments as a reflection of her work. But, she learned that push-back is often just a question of understanding and not being taken by surprise. Do Restaurants Fail?

By Gabe Connell

As Gabe Connell puts it, failure can often be a paralyzer. When he started HotBox Pizza 12 years ago, he didn’t realize that he would see many failures throughout the business’ history. Originally, HotBox was founded as part of Pizza Express in Bloomington, but a legal entanglement led to Gabe’s spinning off three locations into the first HotBox restaurants in 2005.

Today, HotBox is one of Indy’s most popular pizza restaurants, and their motto “Eat. Sleep. Rebel.” reflects some of Gabe’s own philosophy. He knows that failure is just part of business, but that it’s important to not let that failure get in the way of our future. Failure is only truly bad when we use it to step away from our successes. Gabe shared with us the importance that passion plays in being a small business owner. We have to be passionate enough to rebel against the melancholy failure can bring us, and push through to our future success.

GABE’S TIPS FOR FAILING SUCCESSFULLY:

You must have a culture of failure. Failure is going to happen, but how you respond to it is what is important. Let your employees and partners know it’s okay to fail. If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough.

Never say “I told you so.” This phrase can be poisonous. Regardless of whether you think an idea will work or not, if it is settled on, then everyone must go forward as if that idea is their own. When they’re thinking, “this isn’t going to work,” they’re already admitting failure and defeat.

There’s a big difference between ultimate failures and big mistakes. Mis- takes are bound to happen, and if you’re learning and moving forward then you aren’t truly failing ultimately. The only time we truly fail is when we give up. Quoting Failure

By John McDonald

As CEO and Founder of Cloud One, John has seen his fair share of failures. While Cloud One is Indiana’s fastest growing IT company, John shares with us a few messages that he’s received over the years that signal big moments of failure and the lessons learned.

HERE ARE A FEW OF THE QUOTES JOHN USED TO FRAME HIS SPEECH, AND WHAT HE SAID ABOUT THEM:

“The Clown is Not Happy.” When CloudOne first began offering management services, their first client was McDonalds. CloudOne was set up to work with small companies, and McDonalds proved to be a much larger responsibility than they were prepared for at the time. After a particularly awful weekend, John received an email from their Chef Sponsor at McDonalds that was titled “The Clown is not happy.”

“Honestly, I would have jumped off a building.” This quote came from one of John’s trusted friends in business, Tom Kilcoyne, after reviewing CloudOne’s internal problems. He told John that CloudOne’s employees couldn’t handle problems on their own, that they would offer up their problem on a platter and expect John to fix it himself. When John asked what Tom would do to fix the situation, he simply responded with “Honestly, I would have jumped off a building.” John learned that as a leader, you need to hire people that are better then you, people that can handle and fix problems on their own.

“I tell you the truth, I only sneezed cocaine once.” After CloudOne grew into a large company, John found himself in a situation where he was travelling with his team for business. Like they always did, they talked very casually among one another about how they don’t have a systemic drug testing program at the company. After a few casual jokes, one new employee nervously blurted out: “John, I tell you the truth, I only sneezed cocaine once.” In the end, the casual conversations and jokes that John and his team held when they were a smaller group needed to shift as the company grew larger. This new employee didn’t know the culture, and ultimately feared for his job.