Allow yourself to make mistakes with your online business.

By any chance, do you struggle with perfectionism?  Is the fear of making a mistake preventing you from taking positive action with your online business?  If so, you're not alone.

In recent years, I have been doing a lot of coaching with online entrepreneurs and content creators.  Many of them are doing extremely well, while others are struggling to gain traction.  One of the major differences I have noticed between both categories of people is their tolerance for making mistakes.

To a certain degree, no one really enjoys making mistakes.  We all make them, but they can feel like a shot to our ego, particularly if our mistakes are made in front of an audience.  Generally speaking, we tend to prefer getting things right the first time, but how often has that happened in your life?  Getting everything right on the first try is a very uncommon occurrence and certainly shouldn't be something we're resting our sense of emotional well-being upon.

By nature, I tend to be a perfectionist, but over time, that has been gradually changing.  I have had to be honest with myself that perfectionism isn't productive, nor is it a realistic philosophy to allow to govern our lives.  It can keep us from making important advancements and can prevent us from experimenting with new ideas.  In fact, those who risk not making mistakes tend to be very slow at building their online businesses due to their fear of failure and overly self-critical attitudes.

Mistakes teach us what not to do.  Mistakes also lead to helpful discoveries.  Mistakes may also lead to receiving feedback from the audience we're attempting to serve, and that feedback can help us refine the content, products, and services we offer.

Last night, I sat down for dinner with a man named Chris.  Chris is a talented musician who regularly hosts shows and concerts in my area.  YouTube often recommends his music to me as well.  I asked him to fill me in on anything new that's happening with him, and he told me that a record executive from Sony reached out to him this week, invited him to record one of his new songs in their studio, and is convinced that Chris is about to become a household name in the music industry.

Chris is about to head to Nashville to make that recording, so I mentioned an observation I have often made about some of the most successful people I know to see if he agreed.  I said, "The most successful people are just like everyone else, with at least one glaring exception.  They aren't easily discouraged by their setbacks and mistakes.  They keep going long after most people would have quit."  He agreed with that assessment and said that he has made a similar observation.

Don't be easily discouraged by your mistakes and setbacks.  Keep pressing on.  Keep moving forward.

In a related vein, are you familiar with someone who goes by the online moniker "VidProMom"?  Her online platform is all about teaching families how to capture higher-quality family videos, and she's made a career out of doing this.

While listening to an interview with her recently, she lamented how long it took for her to get her online platform started.  Instead of diving in and being willing to make a series of rookie mistakes, she hesitated to get her platform underway because she couldn't bear the thought of failing.  In her estimation, she wasted more than a year trying to get things going.

Thankfully, she got over herself and started making healthy progress toward building her online business while allowing herself to make the necessary mistakes she needed to make in order to learn and succeed along the way.  Now, her platform has completely replaced the income she used to earn at a traditional job.

Would you like your online platform to replace your current income?  It's absolutely possible for that to be the case, but the more time you linger in the fear of failure or the fear of making mistakes, the longer it's going to take to get there.

In moments like this, when we're chatting about failure, I'm reminded of Teddy Roosevelt's encouragement to essentially "fail gloriously."  Are you familiar with what he said?  Let me quote a portion of it to you.

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming."  -Theodore Roosevelt

Are you willing to fail gloriously?  Are you willing to come up short?  Are you willing to make multiple errors on your way to your most valuable discoveries?

Who among us hasn't failed in some capacity?  We've all experienced failure.  Like I said earlier, it isn't always pleasant, but it can be extremely beneficial just the same.  Some of my greatest successes in life and business sprung from the ashes of my lowest moments of failure.  In failing, I gained valuable experience.  I gained helpful wisdom.  I developed an inner strength that became stronger than my inner critic.

I experience a true test of my willingness to fail every time I record a podcast.  At present, I host four shows, and two of them are recorded before a live audience.  I guess if I really wanted to, I could edit out the errors I sometimes make when recording those shows, but I rarely do.  I've decided to leave the mistakes in the recording.  I think it makes those shows more authentic and real.  (And, if I'm honest, it saves me time, which means I can begin the process of creating new content instead of attempting to overly perfect the content I've already created.)

With all that being said, I hope this pep-talk is helpful for you.  Give yourself permission to make mistakes.  Allow yourself to fail gloriously.  Let's see where your business lands as you allow yourself to take risks that come with no guaranteed outcome.  I suspect you'll be grateful for taking those risks.

© John Stange, 2025