Micah Baldwin Says Failure is Job One, Wordcamp LA Attendees Rejoice

Micah Baldwin is the sort of speaker with which  audiences can truly connect.  Listening to Micah speak about “Failure is Job One” at the first annual Wordcamp LA is like having a pint of beer with him.  He served-up his topic with 2 parts sincerity, 1 part off-the-cuff and zero parts  BS.

Micah (”mee-hah”) is best known for creating “Follow Fridays” on Twitter in addition to his work with Lijit .  He was quick to set the record straight by declaring, “Follow Friday’s was the result of my failure to connect friends via Twitter.”  He had my attention.

He went on to talk about how to fail and the rules of blogging, but his overarching message still rings in my head:

Failure is a process.  A failure is an event.

Losing is an ending.  A loser is a person.

Take a second to think about that.  His point was that failure is part of the journey to success.  It’s just an event in one’s personal or professional trek.  It doesn’t define us.  Rather, it helps season us with wisdom to help us better achieve our goals.  Ah, that’s the catch!  We have to have goals clearly defined before we can chalk-up any events as a “falure” or “success”.  Do’h!

This point is relevant to brand managers, marketers, mothers, entreprenuers, employees and any other human.  If we’re not setting goals and willing to experience failures, then we have eliminated any possiblity of success.   That sounds pretty grim, huh?  I didn’t think so either.

Are you setting goals for your personal life?  Are you setting goals at work?  The reality is that most of us don’t set and measure our goals, failures and successes.  You need to start if you want to experience real success as an individual and/or as part of a team.    What does this have to do with a blog or social media or you as a person?

It means that we need to screw things up once in a while.  We need to drop the ball with a loved one, feel the sting and learn from it.  We need to insert our feet in to our mouths in a social network, feel the the sting and learn from it.  We need to write crap blog posts that people hate, feel the sting and learn from it.

At the end of the day, if we are not evolving, then we are devolving in our jobs and in our lives.

Have some stories about a major screw up from which you gained a tremendous of wisdom or “never going to do that again”?