Success Secret: Failure July 9, 2012My BusinessOff

“My failure resume is 100 times longer than my real one,” said Nely Galan during her recent keynote speech at PINK’s Spring into Ownership event in May.

“My two best friends are fear and failure.”

We think she’s on to something – after all, she built the Telemundo network into a $2.8 billion business. The first Latina TV network president didn’t do it by playing it safe.

So how to turn failure into success?

In the first five years of Cheri Beranek’s professional career, she was fired twice. Now, as the CEO of the publicly traded organization Clearfield Inc., she realizes how those experiences got her where she is today.

What did she learn?

“Don’t work for or hire insecure people. They will only drag you down,” Beranek says. Getting those two pink slips helped make her a good leader, she adds.

The Washington Post points out how hyper-successful minds like J.K. Rowling not only accepted failure – they embraced it. As Rowling puts it, “Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way.”

Plus, Harvard Business Review reports learning from failure is all about mindset – no longer looking at failure as “bad” means employees and organizations can hold higher standards and take more risks.

The bottom line? We’re all afraid to fail. But making an error isn’t bad. It’s just a step closer to that final success.

Bonus PINK Link: Here’s how to squash other fears holding you back.

How do you deal with

By Caroline Cox

“Belief in oneself is one of the most important bricks in building
any successful venture.” Lydia M. Child

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