If there’s anything I’ve learned about being in the world of entrepreneurship and on the journey to turn something I love into something that fuels the rest of my life…

It’s that not every experiment will succeed.

In fact, most of my experiments fail.

And if I’m being honest with myself, I’d rather spend a day of my life trying and failing than to never try at all.

But what if failure isn’t really about “not succeeding” but about what you do with it when it happens?

Do you focus on what isn’t working and eventually give up for good?

Do you tell yourself to just try again and try again but never make any changes to what you’re doing?

Or do you take failure as feedback, as new information, and try again - but with a slightly different approach… just to see what happens the next time?

I’ve gotten in the habit of choosing the last one.

I often think about how, if all the science giants of history gave up after their first or second or hundredth failed experiment, we wouldn’t have the incredible world of knowledge and technology and health we have today.

And you know what?

I kind of think failing is a little bit fun these days.

It makes my brain buzz with the excitement of possibility.

Sometimes you just get a bug that bites you, and you’ve got to see it through.

So, after my “failure” on Friday, my partner and I went to the local indie bookstore this weekend to pick up this month’s sci-fi/fantasy book club book, and I met the owner. She’s a foul-mouthed firecracker of a woman, and I clicked with her instantly.

I found myself impressed that, in a world of cheap shit on Amazon, she’s forging her own path by creating a meeting space for book nerds in downtown Ypsilanti, Michigan.

They’re called Book Love Bar, but they don’t even have the liquor license yet.

And still, she’s opened up shop, and she’s building a community of die-hard fans who love what SHE does - and want to become a part of it.

And it inspired me to see what I can come up with next.

And that, my friend, is the fun of failure.

Will me and my new friend “ultimately succeed” in our business endeavors?

I don’t know - maybe.

They say 20% of all businesses fail in their first year.

Half fail within their first five years.

Two-thirds fail within ten years.

So, are the odds stacked against us?

I don’t know - maybe.

But I’d rather have fun trying a million different ways than to let the fear of failure win out.

Besides, I’d miss out on all the ways I continually grow and learn about myself.

Like how building a website that sucked eventually turned me into a pretty damn good website designer.

Like how failing as a musician and dropping out my third year of music college eventually made me an excellent hypnotist and storyteller.

Like so many countless instances of how my “failures” have actually turned into fuel later on down the road - the kind that I couldn’t possibly have guessed in the moment “failure” happened.

Because all of my try-and-fails in my life?

They somehow always turn out to become the fertile ground for something beautiful in the future.

And now that I’ve sat here free-writing for a while?

Well, now I’m going to go work on my idea to create a 21-day challenge on overcoming fear of failure, breaking free from the self-doubt loop, and getting yourself into confident momentum towards your big dreams and goals.

And she doesn't know it yet, but later this week, I’m going to talk with that bookstore owner and see what kinds of self-development and hypnosis workshops I can share in her nerdy space, so I can get back into building up my own local community.

It's all a fun experiment anyway.

And I’m curious - what’s going to be different in your life when you start to see failure not as the end of the road… but the very beginning of the next exciting chapter of your life?

What's your experiment this week?