Screwing Things Up Isn’t So Bad

So, I was talking to the incredibly sweet, talented and generous Jade Craven at the weekend.

Let me rave about Jade for a minute, just in case you’ve not come across her yet. She’s the best and most prolific guest poster I know, getting slots all over the place for some terrifically value-packed posts. She’s an awesome networker and has a great ecourse on networking, though I’m hesitant to call what she does “networking” because that makes it sound a bit cold. She cares about people and she’s constantly on the look-out for ways to help them. I love to hang out with her on Twitter.

Anyway, in the course of a chatty phone call (kinda funny; both of us hate phones), we mutually admired one another’s accents (she’s Australian, I’m British) and we talked about screwing up.

I’m better at expressing myself in writing than in talking, and I think this is a really pertinent issue for Aliventures, so I wanted to write about that today.

Everyone Screws Up (And Some Even Admit It)

It’s taken me a while to realise this. For years I was convinced that everyone else had it sussed. They’d got all their ducks in a row, and all their eggs neatly distributed between different baskets.

And then I read posts like this one, where the awesomely productive and intelligent and balanced Charlie Gilkey talks about an unproductive morning distracted by an email link:

Instead of jumping right into writing, I checked email, quite unintentionally. I was thinking about a call I needed to make today (Friday), and I think I was checking to see if I had more details in my Inbox. Little did I know that my Inbox contained a goodie that would keep me running around on the Internet for a few hours.

(Charlie Gilkey, One of Those Days (Episode 1), Productive Flourishing)

And posts like this one, where the amazingly talented and funny and just-a-little-bit-intimidating Naomi Dunford talks about messing up (read this post, the end of it still makes me teary):

I screwed up the SpeakEasy almost beyond repair. I bailed on pretty much everything. Email got to the point where it was practically uncontrollable. I cried every day. I hired the wrong VA, but he was a family friend and I felt like I couldn’t let him go. I worked like a dog to make enough money to maintain two houses at once and pay a VA who wasn’t doing any work.

(Naomi Dunford, The Healing Power of Redemption at Christmas, or The One Where We Catalog a Half Dozen Or So of My Screw Ups Hoping You Will Maybe Learn Something From Them or Perhaps Find Some Comfort, IttyBiz)

And here, Dave Navarro, the man for whom the phrase carpe diem was coined, talks about how hard he found it recently to quit soda:

But that space in between, those eight addicted months? That was hard.  Damned hard.  I tried to quit over and over again, and felt absolutely powerless.  Powerless, over a frikkin’ can of soda.  (To be truthful, it was more like 4 or 5 cans a day.)

Why was it easy at one time and hard at the others?  Well, when it was hard it was because of the payoff. My sweet tooth was satisfied.  The buzz seemed helpful at times (though truthfully, the crashes later weren’t worth it).  I “needed” to keep going, and the sodas seemed to help me do that – even though they brought on negative effects, like a constant increase in weight.

(Dave Navarro, Why You Can’t Make That Habit Stick – Part One, Rock Your Day)

We’re all human. We all screw up, generally pretty regularly. It’s okay.

Back when I had a day job, if you screwed anything up, you did your darndest to sort it out quickly (without the boss ever finding out). I think a lot of us carry this attitude around with us. We’re petrified of getting things wrong … and we’re convinced that when we do, everyone will notice and that our entire credibility will be undermined.

But…

Getting it Wrong is How You Learn and Grow

My take is that if I don’t even try, I’m definitely going to fail.

If I give it a go, I might make a cack-handed job of it. But the second attempt will be easier, and the third attempt easier still. Everything’s scary the first time.

When I started out freelancing, I had a business model which – in retrospect – looks totally screwy. I was marketing myself as a “writer and website creator”. I did anything and everything that fell vaguely into my skill set:

• I edited and proofread work as well as writing
• I wrote sales copy, blog posts, magazine articles, reviews…
• I tried and failed to explain to people that whilst I could do the techy bits of websites, my design skills were non-existent
• I deliberately targeted total newbies to websites (very small businesses) and priced far too low, not taking into account all the hand-holding and patient explanations that were required.

Over time, I realised that what I liked doing – and what paid a good hourly rate – was writing. And not just writing, but writing for blogs.

I reinvented myself as a staff blogger. I even wrote an ebook about what I did (The Staff Blogging Course, if you’re interested.)

And then I got itchy feet. I realised that while I liked writing for other people’s sites, what I loved best was writing for my own site and selling my own products. I started going down a more entrepreneurial route. Aliventures.com, which was originally my business website with testimonials, services and a portfolio, became the blog you’re reading now.

This is a far more common story than you might think in the blogosphere and the online world. Everyone I know has changed and shifted – often quite radically – over the time that they’ve been in business. Naomi Dunford and Dave Navarro both started out as freelance writers, and I’d guess they’ve both reinvented themselves, their business model, and even their actual websites multiple times.

The lovely Jade, who is one of the most honest bloggers I know, has written publically about her business has evolved:

I found that my plans for this site evolved as I started interacting more within the social media community. At first I was just targeting bloggers. Then it evolved to info product creators and small business types. It took a long time to decide that my main skill was teaching people how to connect with others online.

(Jade Craven, How I Screwed Up My Blog in 2009, JadeCraven.com)

This is a totally normal process. If you’re in a freelancing or entrepreneurial field – if you run your own business – then you’re going to go through this. You’ll explore and learn and grow. You’ll get bored. Or you’ll get inspired. You’ll change your mind, multiple times. You’ll follow a zig-zagging but wonderful path, instead of plodding steadily onwards on a career treadmill.

This isn’t screwing-up, this is an adventure!

You’ll Always Learn Something

I get stuff wrong. I make mistakes. Mostly they’re little, but embarrassing, ones. I was telling Jade on Sunday how I have a terrible tendency to mix up bloggers with the same first name (especially those in a similar blogging niche: Jonathan Fields and Jonathan Mead, I sincerely apologise!)

This is fine when it’s only in my head. It’s embarrassing when I accidentally email or cite the wrong name…

For me, this is a reminder to take my time more, not to rush things, to check what I’m doing before hitting “send”.

Bigger screw-ups – ones which take up weeks or months or years instead of a few minutes of “oops, better fix that” – aren’t really screw-ups at all. They’re opportunities to learn something.

• In two years of tech support, I learnt that I don’t want to work in a 9-5 office job. I also learnt about running a small business, communicating with clients, and explaining technical things to non-techies.
• In my early months of freelancing, I learnt that I’m happier making websites for free as a favour, rather than trying to make a living from website hand-holding.
• I’ve learnt that though I really enjoy my staff blogging, I also want an outlet for more personal pieces like the ones I post on Aliventures.
• After nearly four years living in London, I’ve learnt that I’m not a Londoner, and that I miss living near my parents.

I didn’t get everything right from day one. I took some wrong turns. I got a bit lost at times. But I’m more confident about the path that I’m on now precisely because of the things which I got wrong. I’m a better writer today because of the failed novels that I’ve written. I’m better at blogging because of the two previous blogs which I never got off the ground.

How about you? What’s working for you today because of past wrong turns? Where are you heading next?