Writing About Failure

Things have been going great at Webmail for quite some time now. We're experiencing healthy growth on a month-to-month basis and things continue to get more exciting every day. But while things are going great at work, things haven't always been so rosy. Likewise, there are other aspects of my life and side projects I've taken on where I haven't had as much success. In other words, I've failed. After getting some inspiration from a blog post titled Talking About Failure by Brad Feld, a venture capitalist blogger I follow, I've decided to blog about some of the failures I've experienced over the last few years. I don't mean to be negative or dwell on my mistakes, but I think it's important to talk openly about those mistakes, learn something from them, and who knows, maybe someone else will learn something too.

Ironically, I was giving a talk to a grad school class at Virginia Tech this morning and one of the students asked me about dealing with failure. He mentioned that he's heard people talk about failure and that to be successful you have to fail, first. I couldn't agree more with that statement. In fact, I think it's important to remember that failure isn't bad. Whether you're starting a business, making a sales call, chasing a dream, or asking someone out on a date, it's okay to fail. If you don't put yourself out there, you'll never have the chance to succeed in the first place.

I plan to write about some of the failures I've experienced in different areas of my life. Some will be recent, some not so recent. Some will be about business and some will be more on the personal side of my life. Some will be easy to write about, some won't be. They won't necessarily be in chronological order either. I plan to just write about them as they come to me. Stay tuned...