Scott Free Thinking

What is failure? What determines the definition of the word? How do you know when you have found yourself there, in that state? Is failure something to dread or something to celebrate?

It has been a couple months now since my original efforts to become financially independent, as I talk about in Public Experiment #1 - Using the Law of Attraction :: Part 1. To sum things up, I have been living with my girlfriend Kim at the expense of losing my father’s financial and material support for my college tuition and other living expenses. My dad owns my car, was paying for its insurance and gas, was paying my college tuition money, and was the only one supplying me with a monthly budget during my first semester in college. I moved out in December of 2006, just a few months ago. Since that time, I have lost over $1200 in investments. This may not sound like much to the average business man, and it’s actually not, but I’d like to consider this in proportion when I look at the fact that I started with a little more than $2000 to begin with. That means that essentially, over 60% of my funds were spent on investments that did not see a return. There are a number of things I have tried to do in terms of getting business started.

For one, I tried to do my own business with Prepaid Legal, an MLM/network marketing company, and after quickly running out of resources and being faced with the greater problems of financial lack, I have been forced to temporarily halt actions on the part of this business. Some reading this might point the finger at the MLM model itself, but sorry guys - this one is simply being put to a stop for the simple reason that I do not currently have the resources to make it successful. Resources such as time, money, leads, and namely - transportation. I’ve been without my car ever since my dad pulled his support upon my moving in with my girlfriend Kim.

I have attempted to get around to doing more events with Barton Ct., but in order to really get our small event packages off the ground, we would need some start up material, which we do not currently have. In order to do any kind of advertising what so ever, we would need some demo material to show people seeking our services what we have to offer. We do not even have the things we need to create that demo material.

Retail efforts at the Dirty Mechanism Online Store have proceeded to escalate to higher levels of success, but nothing particularly extraordinary. Profits for the last couple months of ‘06 were fairly increased, likely due to the holiday season, and have since continued at a steady rate of approximately one sale a day or so. After two different online Google campaigns, traffic has been increased time and time again, but unfortunately increased traffic has somehow failed to correspond to higher sales. The interesting thing to note here in this particular business effort is that the sales tend to stay the same through both high and low numbers.

And finally, there is the personal development blog here at DirtyMechanism.com. This blog has proceeded in allowing me to earn an extra buck or two per day, but so far there has not been anything terribly impressive. Saying that, however, should be said with the fact in mind that this blog has received more attention from an audience than any project I’ve ever done. Thousands of people have read the articles on this site, and hundreds are reading it every day. No matter how small this accomplishment might be in the larger scheme of things - I’m proud of it nonetheless. I hope I have proceeded in making a difference in people’s lives.

In another recent entry, What Era Are You In?, I described a unique outlook I have on my life at this current time, and this era is an era of failure. Particularly, I talked about the fact that I am now back working the same exact place I was working for my first job back in 2005, and in relation to that, many of the other attributes in my life right now are identical to those characteristics that were a part of me during that time. I am back at this job with virtually no money, my friends are once again distant from me, and in order to get back my old car, I’m having to move back to my mother’s house. In a way, it almost seems as though I got into a fist fight with the ‘real world’ and lost very badly, ending up beaten and bruised.

But in another way, I do not feel bad at all. Maybe you find yourself in a similar situation. And you know what? You should not feel bad at all either. Setbacks of such a small degree have happened with start up energy that is so minuscule in scale that perhaps it is that start up energy that should be the regret. The action, on the other hand, is not something that I will ever, could ever, and should ever, feel down about, because it was going out, trying, failing, and now getting ready to get out there and try again.

It might seem like such a simple message, the entire, “If at first you do not succeed, try, try again.” But in this particular case, you can bet that it is the motto I am following, no matter how traditional and conventional it might be.

There is little left to do now other than to keep on carrying on. This is, in fact, the exact moment in which the majority of the people out there in my exact same situation would be throwing up their hands to give up, and when they have given up, they truly have failed. This is also, in fact, the exact moment in which I will look back on one day and determine that I did the right thing in continuing to try. Try, and fail all you like, my friend! Because eventually, you WILL succeed!

When I have relayed this news to people, they have asked me two questions the most. Number one, “what happened?” and number two, “what are you going to do next?” If there is one thing that myself, and many others have gained during my time in this whole crazy experiment, it has been creating this blog and working to get the word out on my creativity. What’s next is heading straight back to college to finish getting my psychology major, working non-stop until that is completed and I have a four year degree in my hands. In addition, this website, as well as my online store, will continue, and perhaps during that time, the universe might allow my business to fly, or rather, get off the ground.

Again, we might ask - what is failure? Failure does not actually exist. As Paul Scheele would say, THERE IS NO FAILURE, ONLY FEEDBACK. In other words, failure is only feedback, feedback being only information given to you so that you may learn a better course of action to take in yet another attempt, or preferably, another success.