Making Mistakes Matter

Learning from my mistakes and launching a new business

There was a meme cropping up on my Facebook feed last week that oddly didn’t have anything to do with that viral video post of mine. The meme (below) basically alludes to the fact that if you make a mistake more than once, it is by choice.

Something to think about?

Personally, I like to think of mistakes as lessons but perhaps I’m in denial here and slow on the uptake. Who hasn’t made the same mistake twice?

In terms of blogging and social media, I’ve probably made every mistake in the book. In terms of research and development, I’ve pushed the envelope, not believed in the initial results and made the same mistake twice. Maybe more than twice. So yes in those instances it was my choice.

The blogging and social media landscape is forever changing. What worked for bloggers five or more years ago, starting out when there wasn’t such a saturated market, isn’t necessarily going to work for you now. It can be hit or miss as to what works and inevitably mistakes will be made even once you’ve found your feet.

Having a personal blog that I can play around with and test the waters means I can have a whole lot of fun making mistakes, learning a tremendous amount in the process.

Sometimes what comes after a mistake or two have been my greatest triumphs.

It’s the same with social media. You only have to look at the fuss on Instagram now that Facebook have taken over and decided to change the way your feed hits you. Apparently, just following a page no longer means you will automatically get to see what they post on your feed.

Pages have been asking for you to ‘turn them on’ all week, in regards to hitting the notification page, so that each time they post to Instagram you will receive a notification. I’m not a fan of notifications, so I took a much different approach…

All a bit of fun though and I wasn’t seriously telling anyone what not to do. It’s not my style, as is asking for you to turn on notifications. I believe for the most part, my regulars on Instagram knew where I was coming from with this.

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out on Instagram. I’m assuming this just makes it harder for brands and businesses to get to their target audience. It also puts the pressure on to spend money on sponsored posts. A WIN WIN for nobody other than Instagram. Or is it?

I think ultimately this is a great lesson that we shouldn’t put all our social media eggs in the one basket. Nor should we rely on one particular platform over the other to drive traffic to our blog or website.

While it is important to keep up with the changing social media landscape and the ever changing and challenging algorithms that come with that, at the end of the social media day, it’s more important to focus on your business and being your authentic self. It also means providing quality and engaging content. If that means making a mistake along the way, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Making Mistakes Matter?

With my new business launching later this year, I’ve been thinking a lot about mistakes and how many businesses fail in the first year.

Thanks to my Business Diploma studies with Business Mamas, I’ve been doing a lot of research in terms of how the business will be structured. It means sharing my business plan with a handful of people that I trust and owning up to past mistakes.

At the moment it seems the more research I do the more work I seem to create for myself. It has me questioning if taking 12 months off to study, adding more to my work load, isn’t one big mistake. The truth is, it’s a huge relief that I have taken this approach.

Spending 12 months researching and fine tuning my new business before launching, is probably the best decision I’ve made. There’s no rushing in head first, uneducated and making mistakes that might ruin my business and set me up for failure.

That doesn’t mean I’m not going to make mistakes. I’m just putting myself in the best position possible to deal with them. The more effort I put in now, the better results long term. You could say I’ve learnt my lesson from previous mistakes and Business Mamas has helped me do that.

Are you guilty of making the same mistake twice? Does it really become a choice or are you just guilty of being a slow learner?

You can read more about my Business Mamas journey… here!