I’ve run a few businesses over the years.

They’re generally in technology, because it’s what I know, and what I’m passionate about.

But they’ve been across a few industries – my first business was a web design business nearly 20 years ago, and since then I’ve run event businesses… club nights that used technology in various fun ways… software and marketing consultancies… and I’ve built, marketed and sold a number of software products across B2B and B2C.

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And I’ve been asked to come and tell you a little bit about my journey.

Usually when people come and talk about their journey, they stick to the successful parts.

And what made those parts successful.

It’s ‘here are the things that I did, and then I was really successful, and if you do those same things then you’ll be successful too’.

And that might be true… but I think it usually isn’t.

Because I think it’s really hard to know which things you did caused you to be successful. I think a lot of people do a lot of things they don’t even realise they’re doing, that are contributing to their success more.

And there’s something called survivor bias, which is the idea that there could be tons of people who tried those same things, and their business failed, but if their business failed then they’re not the ones coming and telling their story.

So I’m always a little bit wary of talking about contributors to success.

So then I’m like…

Maybe I should talk about the mistakes I’ve made?

There have been more than a few.

And I think it would be more useful to talk about these, but it’s still so context-specific. There are things that didn’t work for me that could work for you.

So I won’t focus on these either, but if you want a giggle ask about them in the Q&A.

Instead I decided the best way I could help you in the short time I’m speaking here today was to ask myself:

What do I wish I’d known when I was sat where you are?

And the thing I keep coming back to isn’t any specific tactic for being successful, and it’s not any specific mistake to avoid. The thing I wish I’d fully understood is that—

Making mistakes just isn’t a problem.

Now, this might sound like a strange idea if you’ve just spent the last 16 years working your way up an education system that very much likes to tell you that mistakes are not good.

But there’s something insanely powerful about being able to fully enjoy the process of keeping trying whatever you think is best and right at the time regardless of how it turns out.

And this has been the single biggest game changer for me over the years, and so it’s something I want to share with you today.

Children are really good at this.

If you’ve ever watched kids learn to walk, or talk, they just keep trying. They know where they’re trying to get to; what they want to do; their intention. And then they just keep trying it. And they fail, often it quite funny ways, but there’s no shame. They keep doing stuff, they adapt what they’re doing, they screw up again, and they try again. And eventually things fall into place.

And I think we grow out of that as we grow older.

Or it gets educated out of us.

But by the time we’re adults most of us have this critical inner voice that starts telling us why we shouldn’t try that thing.

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“What if there’s something else that I should be doing instead?”

Sometimes it’s even “What if this works too well?” —I’ve watched people turn down great opportunities because ‘if it goes well there’ll be too much demand and I won’t be able to keep up’!

They’re all totally irrational.

And one of the best things I ever learnt, eventually, is that—

You can talk back to that voice.

It’s not you, and it’s not always right.

You can’t switch it off, but you can tune in to listening to it. You can get better at hearing it. And you can question what it’s telling you.

And we can talk about specifics of how to do that in the Q&A if you want to ask about it, because it’s not a skill everyone can pick up immediately.

But as you do you’ll get out of your own head a little bit. You’ll try more stuff.

You’ll get what from the outside people describe as “luckier”.

From the outside it looks like luck.

And of course it’s not luck at all.

What’s happening is that everything in business is luck, and by doing more you’re increasing your luck surface area, if you like, so that more of the lucky stuff can hit you.

People will start to wonder how you always know the right thing to do, and the answer is that you didn’t—you just stopped worrying so much about the outcome of everything, you keep trying what you think is right, and things will click.

Now when I say don’t worry about the outcome, that doesn’t mean don’t set goals.

Absolutely still have goals for your business. It’s really good to have a direction. To know where you’re headed.

But the important distinction is between the importance of getting there versus focusing on the journey.

Focus on the journey.

Focus on what you can do right now towards your goal, but don’t use the journey as a means to an end.

Don’t postpone your happiness, and your sense of self-worth and achievement, for ‘I’ll only be happy once I get to that goal. Once I make this amount of money, once the business has so many locations’ or whatever it is.

Those are all great goals to have, but how good you are is not tied to whether you achieve those things or not or how quickly.

Don’t hustle so much that you make your life horrible now in the hope of some future utopia.

Don’t live your life by ‘when I get there I’ll be happy’.

I say that for two reasons.

One is more obvious—if you don’t get there: which might happen, because you can only control your inputs, you can’t control what happens in the end, you’re going to be disappointed.

But also if you do get there: you’ll be so used to striving for future goals that you’ll just set another one.

I think people can miss their whole life that way.

So focus more on what you’re doing now. What you can control. Just keep swimming.

And that way you’re kind of winning, regardless.

Work to enjoy the journey. Whether it’s going up, or whether it’s going down, that day. And it will do both.

There’s nothing you can do about that.

But if you can learn to accept and enjoy the downs as well as the ups: firstly you’re always winning, and secondly there’s more chance you’ll get to your goals.

You’ll be in a place where you’ll have a little bit of distance from your business, you can look at things more objectively, and when things do go wrong rather than taking it personally and making snap decisions you’ll be in a place where you can objectively decide—’what can I learn from that? And what can I do next time?’

The alternative is that you resist the fact that things went wrong. Now you’re picking a fight with reality, and you won’t win.

So accept when things happen. It’s already happened—your resistance won’t change it.

Maybe you can even use it as an opportunity to learn something for next time.

If you stop telling yourself the lie that everything is always supposed to go smoothly, things will start to feel that little bit smoother.

I say this on the big picture level about your entire business, but this is also the same with any given day.

Maybe you’d set some self-expectations for the day, and you haven’t hit them?

I’m seeing people do this a lot more this year with everything going on, but you get to the end of the day, and maybe your energy has been low. And you had a to-do list of a dozen things to get done and you haven’t done some of them. Maybe you haven’t done any of them.

So there’s this mismatch between ‘this is what I expected to happen’ and ‘this is what actually happened’. And for some reason—

We immediately decide that our expectation must have been right, and our output must have been wrong.

And then we beat ourselves up about it.

When in reality it’s simply that the expectation was out.

How much you got done that day is exactly the amount you were able to get done that day.

And where your business is at is exactly where it’s able to be at right now.

That’s the reality. You can absolutely learn from it and use what you learn to change how you do what you do next. That’s the game. But try not to beat yourself up for the reality of how this time didn’t go how you expected.

When things do go wrong? Feel the sadness.

And the anger.

But recognise it for what it is.

It’s an emotion in your body. You should feel it, you should listen to it, and then it will pass.

You haven’t been personally attacked. Don’t let that critical voice craft a whole story around how the business not going well right now in a certain way means that you shouldn’t be doing this, that you’re a failure, and all the rest of it.

Just accept it for what it is. You’re playing this game of life. Sometimes things will go your way, sometimes they won’t, but either way you’ll learn from it, you can take steps next time, and you’ll be OK.

And the last part of that is to be honest with yourself.

If things aren’t going well, don’t be afraid to tell yourself that. If you’re feeling low about things.

I for sure in the past had a tendency to label everything as “fine”, no matter how it was going. I told myself things were always good because I didn’t like to acknowledge what it meant about me if the business wasn’t “going well”.

And actually things go a lot smoother when you can accept that it’s not a problem, and certainly doesn’t say anything about your core as a person, if there was a deal you really hoped to get and it didn’t work out, or the business is struggling, it’s OK to say that things are shit, and that you’re feeling shit because of it.

And it’s important to have at least one other person you can be honest with, too.

That might be friends or family. It might be a mentor. It might be a therapist. And it can be me—I’ve asked Louise to give everyone my email address, and if you ever just want to chat about what’s going on, the good things or the bad things, I’m always here.

But make sure there are people who you can open up to and who can help you feel good about your core self, even when the business isn’t going how you hoped it would. It’ll make a huge difference to how quickly you can bounce back.

Thank you for having me here today, and if you have any questions I’d love to answer them.