I had the opportunity to meet Barry Moltz early this year as a guest speaker at a luncheon I attended. When I signed up I wasn’t expecting much; just another entrepreneur talking about his path to success and what he learned along the way. But Barry’s approach was different. For the first time a business guru was highlighting failure not as an interesting course correction on his road to inevitable success, but as seemingly random events that might just as often have no more to teach us than the number of clouds in the sky. This is not to say that he believes failure is unrelated to preparedness, just that not all failure holds the secret to success—sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
The best way to be prepared for failure, says Barry, is to build your “bounce” in the form of ten “Building Bands of Success.” These bands are meant as much to stretch you as they are to provide the elasticity of your bounce. Bands such as humility, facing fear, and giving up shame begin to build a resilient foundation for the bounce you will need to recover from the failure you are sure to experience.
I recently invited Barry to speak at an upcoming YPC event, and took it as an opportunity to read his latest book Bounce! Failure, Resiliency, and Confidence to Achieve Your Next Great Success. His book was difficult to read—not for the style, but for the content. I identify strongly with the try-and-try-again archetype. I embody the failure is not an option attitude that is vilified in the book. And I have held many a “post-mort” meeting trying to draw learns from less than successful ventures. I’m not ready to stop the project autopsies anytime soon—but I may be apt to spend less time with the cadaver.
If you would like to hear more about Bounce! directly from the author, YPC will be hosting Barry Moltz at a Sttratigic Insights dinner this Wednesday. For more information or to register click here.
