Make Way More Mistakes

I was triggered by my son.

My son is 17, we’ve recently been to a concert in London and it was the most time we’ve spent together since he was about 9 or 10. We stayed in the same hotel room together and the first thing he did was make a cup of tea using the in house condiments. The smallest things make people happy - I’ve stayed in 100’s of hotels over the last 3-4 years and I can honestly say that making a cuppa isn’t the priority for me, I have a shower and chill.

But that’s not what triggered me - I’m digressing…

No, we went to charge the car at Fleet Services (southbound for those interested) on the way home and we were discussing his recent driving lessons and how he’s learning the 3 point turn and his parallel parking and I was triggered.

I instantly went back to my first driving lesson and whilst my technical skills were good (I passed first time which my son has to know repeatedly) - the thing that completely and utterly confused me until the very last driving lesson was the indicators and how they worked.

I could make some chirpy remark about driving a BMW and not needing the indicators but that would be childish..

No, my brain just couldn’t understand which way the indicator stick should go if I was turning left or right. Sounds ridiculous right?

It wasn’t until my driving instructor explained to me that the indicator stick should move in the direction you want to turn the wheel that I go it.

I’d been making that mistake for the entire 5 days of lessons (I did my lessons in the Army and we all had to learn within 5 days) until I asked and got the right answer.

It wasn’t the end of the mistakes.

Once I’d passed the driving test (again, first time) - the mistakes didn’t stop.

I once almost got into a fight with another driver as I stopped at a red light - that’s a bold statement and it’s bending the truth slightly but I used to live in the Army barracks in Bulford which is about an hour and 30 min drive from Portsmouth and I would regularly spend late evenings and nights with friends before driving back ‘home’ in the early hours of the night/morning.

It was on one of these ‘commutes’ back to the barracks that I was pulling off the motorway and joining a dual carriageway and as I was approaching the end of the junction slip road, the lights began to turn red (with the obligatory amber light to warn you) and I immediately threw on the brakes to make sure I stopped in time and didn't incur the wrath of any local policeman monitoring those lights at 3am in the morning.

That sudden and deliberate action clearly annoyed the driver behind me (and it would annoy me now) because I could have got through the lights before they went red and carried along my way but I didn’t and the driver behind me was quite rightly enraged.

Then there was the time I pulled into a petrol station (gas station to my American friends) - and I immediately pulled up to the first available pump - ignoring that I could have pulled to the front pump and allowed others to file in behind me.

All these mistakes were genuinely mistakes - despite the hatred I got from other drivers in my early years of driving, I was just trying my best to learn the unspoken rules of the road.

It happens every time.

When I was thinking of these mistakes and suddenly realising that I wasn’t superhuman, I started to see patterns in everything.

Every time I’ve tried something new, I’ve made genuinely honest mistakes but the thing is, I needed to make those mistakes to get better at what I was trying to do.

When I look at my early Youtube videos, I see so many editing mistakes that I just wouldn't make now - too much dead time, too much emphasis on things which don’t matter and too many ‘montages’.

If I look at my early posts on Instagram, there was no cohesive design, no decent copy and definitely no spark of interest to generate an audience.

All these mistakes were genuine mistakes - I didn’t want to over edit my videos or have a shit copy on my Instagram - it’s just the way it happened.

This is why writing this blog is so much fun - I am slowly picking up little bits which make the blog more readable.

For example, over the last two weeks I’ve got rid of the emojis on the small sub headings on my blog - making the headlines disappear into the text rather than break it up and I read a short comment from Mark Schaefer on LinkedIn which offered up suggestions on how to write better stuff and he mentioned about how perspectives and stories should be the bedrock to every decent piece of writing which is why i’m telling stories now.

Stories are genuine. Stories are human.

It’s affecting me now.

Every time you make a mistake, you get the chance to refine and learn. It’s simple to say but the fact that you have to fail is debilitating to most people - it’s what stopped me from writing these blog posts and starting a weekly newsletter when I knew I wanted to.

It’s why people don’t record videos and do all the things they know will bring them business - because it might go wrong.

Only today I had the conversation with one of my sales reps and he reminded me of a great phrase - you miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take.

That hits hard because the fear of making mistakes should never stop you from making them - you have to make them in order to move towards the right place.

I’m currently going through this ‘fear’ phase with some short form video that I want to post but I also want it to be perfect.

I see so many creators creating amazing short form video complete with graphics, captions and animations and I want to do the same - obviously in my own style - but I want to post that level of video.

I have around 25-30 short form videos which I could edit and post but the fear of putting out something mediocre is stopping me from doing it.

But then I am reminded of the fact that simplicity often captures the biggest imaginations.

Keep making them.

Despite my fears and the fact that I don’t want to post these videos - I will do it. Because that’s the only way I can get better.

It’s the way I became a better driver and it’s the way I’ve become a better person.

I’ve made countless mistakes throughout my life - some I wish I hadn't, some I wish I’d made again and again and some which I can’t remember (because those nights started out with a ‘quick’ drink) but I wouldn’t change them.

The biggest thing I’ve learned from all these mistakes is to keep making them and make them fast - no point in hanging around and delaying the inevitable, you will fail eventually so you may as well do it fast.

My career has been helped with mistakes - I remember trying to sell to people who didn’t need what I was selling and I remember walking away from people who definitely (looking back with hindsight) did need what I was selling.

No sale, no relationship and no life should be perfect - if you ever want to strive for perfection then you’re going to fail.

And that’s where you need to start.

Failure.