I like this article on the Good News Network which talks about how to fail successfully. While it talks about it from a personal standpoint, it can be transferred to the professional as well.
The overall point made is that pain is feedback, and when pain comes, it tells us that something is wrong; obvious, but powerful to know.
As far as it relates to any business, we need to know why pain to the business is being experienced, and what the solutions are to take care of it.
The richest man in the world this year, Warren Buffett, has always said that one of the key elements of running a business is to make sure the risks we take aren't the types of risks that can destroy the business if they fail. In other words, pain should not be terminal. A business will die, just like a human being, if we take risks that either wildly succeed, or will bring the business down.
In online marketing we need to understand the difference between the two. The nature of business, as in life, is getting feedback from how we are performing. It's normal to get all sorts of feedback and sift through it to let it tell its story. It's not normal to always have feedback be the difference between surviving or not. If it is, we have to make some drastic changes, as that's not the way any business should be run, or life be lived.
To fail successfully in business means we need to work on the right things, and not be taking the types of chances on a continuous basis that will make the business sink or swim. If we do, we don't have a solid understanding of the business or the customers we serve.
The failure we will all experience time to time needs to be failure we can face and adapt to, not failure that ends our existence.
Of course refusing to respond to feedback or failure will end up destroying a business as well, as not taking care of it over a period of time will add up the failures, eventually growing into a mountain, rather than a small hill.
In the end, we need to know the difference between risk and recklessness. Risk is trying different things and properly interpreting the feedback. Recklessness is laying everything on the line time after time. Anyone who runs a business that way is always one step from the ultimate failure: business death.
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