What constitutes success? Depending on which decade of my life you asked this question, I would provide different answers. In my youth, I would have said success is defined by how much you know. In my twenties, I might have said that success is defined by how much risk you are willing to take. In my thirties, that seemed to shift toward being defined by who you know. Then it started to become more about how well capitalized you were. Now, I think that when all is said and done, success is defined by how persistent you are.
You are never going to know enough. You are never going to have enough money, or know enough people. You are never going to take the right bet, and often your small gambles will not pay off. However, there is one thing that no one can take away from you, and that is your willingness to keep showing up.
Persistence is the trait that most defines the successful. There are many other traits that matter; still, the ability to pick yourself up and try again, the willingness to dust yourself off after being thrown for a loop, stands above the rest when you are trying to accomplish something special.
My new ambition in life is to get a startup off the ground, to turn out meaningful and useful software, and to convince people to pay us for it. This road is full of setbacks, potholes, warning signs, and more than one detour. Nearly every day I am told that what we want to achieve is impossible, ridiculous, foolish, amateur, or doomed to fail. Every other day I learn about the next difficulty that is insurmountable, overwhelming, and a near certain show stopper. If something is going great today, it will likely fall apart tomorrow. Such is the life of the entrepreneur.
However, my team and I are not the first to face this scenario. I daresay every startup from the dawn of time has encountered the same kinds of problems, the same uncertainty, and the same discouragement of the day to day grind. What separates the ones that overcome from the ones that fail? The situations are diverse, so it is hard to say; yet there is a common denominator. The founders persist. What is your reaction when you are punched in the face? When you are at the helm of a startup, it must be to tell the person who smacked you, thank you, and may I please have another?
Staying persistent in the face of constant failure is incredibly difficult, but it is achievable if you understand how persistence actually works. It is less about willpower and more about engineering your environment, your mindset, and your expectations. Persistence does not come from always feeling inspired; it comes from having a cadence that is independent of emotion. Build a small, repeatable rhythm that continues whether you feel like it or not. If you can build a team and teach that team to follow a consistent process, then you will encourage them to show up tomorrow and do it again.
Adopt this mentality and lower the stakes with each attempt. Make your attempts smaller and quicker, shorten the cycle between attempts, and detach your personal identity from outcomes. Just because things failed today does not mean that you or the team failed. Failure is the process. Failure is often the goal. Persistently pursue a course of action until failure occurs, back off a little, and then try again. When identity is tied to showing up, not winning, failure no longer threatens your sense of self. That is when true persistence begins.
Persistence is not about enduring pain endlessly. It is about reducing the pain per cycle, learning faster, and building rhythm despite the noise of failure.
Yessir! Failure is the stepping stone to success!