You have to learn to fail… well. There’s a story behind that. This is your daily message from Chad number 661 to upgrade your mental game today by telling yourself a better story, because the most important story you hear is the story you tell yourself. This message is dedicated to Frederick K. Smith.
Fred Smith is the most successful transportation entrepreneur in the world. His spoke and wheel concept which is the basis of FedEx, transformed American business. The idea a physical object could be moved across the country overnight was magical. But overnight delivery was anything but an overnight success.
Even when Fred conceived of the concept of the business for a school project the paper received a C grade. FexEx stands for Federal Express which he named because of a contract he expected to receive from the Federal Reserve System to transport payments to various branches. In the early 70’s before electronic payments, payments could take up to 10 days. Fred not only bought the planes before receiving the contract, he named the business based on it. The Federal Reserve said no. The very first flight carrying packages to the transportation hub in Memphis totaled four.
Today FedEx has revenue of almost $90 billion and over 500,000 employees. But this was the first day of business. When the huge cargo doors flung open on the Falcon jet, it was all but empty, with just four packages. FedEx overnight delivery service was anything but an overnight success. It looked like a failure. But in business and in life you have to learn to fail well. Smith believed in the concept. He knew if it could survive, it would succeed.
In his book Principles, Ray Dalio wrote “that the key to success lies in knowing how to both strive for a lot and fail well. By failing well, I mean being able to experience painful failures that provide big learnings without failing badly enough to get knocked out of the game.” Looking at the beginnings of every successful career and venture, you will see what looks like failure. During the dot-com bust, Jeff Bezos watched Amazon’s stock plummet from $113 to $6. James Dyson describes his pursuit of the bagless vacuum cleaner as twenty years of debt, personal overdraft liabilities, and mortgaging his house. At almost 50 years old his life looked like a failure.
Persistence emerges as a common theme. Charles Kettering said “Every great improvement has come after repeated failures.” What distinguishes winners isn’t avoiding failure but how they respond to it—through learning, adaptation, and persistent vision.
Former President Calvin Coolidge’s famous quote on persistence is a good one, “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On!’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
If you have a good story about persistence email me at fromchadsmith@gmail.com. You can find these messages on YouTube by searching @fromchad. You can read the transcript of this message and hundreds of others at fromchad.com.
