The Small Business Advantage: Turning Failure into Growth

By Jenn Trepeck, Health and Lifestyle Coach

(small.news) — As a health and lifestyle coach and business owner myself, I see it all the time. Clients set goals, make plans, and strive for perfection.

I strongly relate to this as a Type A perfectionist. However, coaching has shown me that this mindset can hold us back. Perfection is a myth; lasting success comes from making mistakes and overcoming setbacks. In personal development and business, they call it failing forward fast.

What “Fail Forward Fast” Really Means

Fail forward fast (FFF) means exactly what it sounds like. Mess it up, learn, and keep moving forward. Perhaps the most important lesson is figuring out how to navigate forward through and around the derailment.

When Momentum Breaks

I’ve heard so many stories of business owners who are consistently earning money, working with their clients, launching a product, and then life happens. Someone or something requires their attention and energy. Now, the momentum that felt so empowering? Gone.

They’re constantly feeling behind, emails pile up, and opportunities feel like they’ve come and gone. Re-entering the daily tasks of the business and reaching out to potential clients after weeks feels like they’re taking the first steps again to climb a mountain.

Here’s the reframe: it doesn’t have to mean “starting over.” In fact, it’s picking up from wherever you are and continuing on. The lesson? How can we create a schedule and business model that allows the business to continue even while your personal focus and attention are pulled elsewhere? Maybe that means time-blocking your calendar, ensuring there is time each day or week for all your priorities (even those outside the company).

It might mean it’s time for support. In your business, it could be someone to delegate to, even if that person doesn’t take on everything. What can they do? Personal support might mean asking for someone else to do something, so you have an hour or two to address another priority. If we learn how to keep moving forward and how to adjust so that the next time a similar situation arises, the derailment is a bit smaller, that failure serves a tremendous purpose.

The Power of Public Failure

Professor, author, and serial small-business owner Scott Galloway recently said he attributes his success to his willingness to experience huge public failures. He took big swings, big enough for the public to pay attention, even if he wasn’t positive the venture would pan out. When I heard this, it made me think about how many of us are potentially playing small to hide the downside. Fail forward fast is the antidote to this instinct.

Mistakes as a Path to Growth

I’ve heard it said, “wisdom comes from pain,” from mistakes. Irish writer James Joyce said, “Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” When perfection is the objective, we’re setting ourselves up for frustration and even stunting our own growth. A willingness to make mistakes and to learn expands what’s possible in our lives. Failure is where the lessons are.

When Success Doesn’t Teach You

As a small business owner, it’s easy to think that overnight successes have everything figured out. A friend of mine in the podcast space saw his first business explode unexpectedly—it grew rapidly and generated income effortlessly. But his next venture was a different story; it took years before he found a service that could become a viable business. He told me he stumbled into his first success, crediting timing and branding for the fast growth. The ease of that win humbled him when future projects proved challenging. Ultimately, the podcast provided a few lessons he could reuse. Instead, it was the many products he tried over the following years that led to the success of his current company and its services.

Building Resilience Through Setbacks

In my work as a health and lifestyle coach, when I hear someone tell their story of “losing the weight” quickly, in a straight line, I can bet with wild accuracy that they’ll gain the weight back. When I see and work with someone who removes less weight than the other person in the same period of time, yet navigates a work conference, holidays, dining out with friends, a major life event, etc. I am confident this is truly a new, healthful lifestyle that will continue, and ultimately, they’ll remove the same, if not more, excess fat, and keep it off! It’s about learning from lessons and having experiences that don’t go as planned, so they build the resilience muscle and the muscle of perpetual growth.

Training Yourself to Embrace “No”

In other areas of life, failure is the goal. In physical exercise, for example, we work a muscle to failure to create change. I had a mentor who recommended I start collecting no’s; the goal was to get to 10 or 20 no’s in a week. This completely changed my outlook on the outreach I needed to do. What’s more, I learned from each “no” and laughed with each yes! Consider that our habits (business or personal), and our thinking, can work the same way, whether it’s a random Tuesday that was swallowed up by back-to-back meetings, a client emergency that leaves you with no time for the day’s original task list, or the child who woke up sick requiring you to completely re-arrange everything for your own day. After those days, we can take a minute to pause and reflect, evaluate what worked and didn’t, and experiment with something else the next time. Then rinse and repeat.

The Case for Failing Forward

Fail forward fast. Our main takeaway: Embracing early failures accelerates learning and growth. This approach lets us figure things out sooner, even when it feels difficult in the moment. Our job in the creative process is to encounter every possible situation and improve each attempt using lessons from the last. Leave room in your plan for mistakes and unforeseen events—failure guides our evolution. I invite you to join this mindset, fail forward fast, keep going, and keep growing, so we can live our happiest and most successful lives.

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