Draw one line through it

I was watching my daughter (6) practice spellings today, and when she got the first one wrong, after a bit of a huff, she drew one perfectly straight line through the word.

“That’s very neat” I commented, absent-mindedly.

She looked up at me with the look that she gives when she’s about to teach me a lesson in life (which is often).

“We should be proud of our mistakes, and just put one line through them. Mrs Smith says so.”

Brilliant advice, as always.

After all, who learnt anything by listening to someone else, then cranking out perfection at the first attempt?

Noone, that’s who.

I sure as hell didn’t make my first email, my first website, my first online store without making a stack of screw-ups. I didn’t make a killing on my first Adwords campaign, my first Facebook campaign, and my first Youtube video is only left online as a measure of progress for everything that came after.

It’s in the pain of getting things wrong, and the reward of fixing them that we learn.

So if you’re still sitting about thinking of making a course, or building up your own marketing campaign, just get started.

Start now while the number of people watching you is small. Make your mistakes early, while they’re still cheap and quick to recover from.

Learn to be happy with failures, but to make them come fast, and come early. Don’t store them up for a grand entrance, or they’ll come all at once, with no time to learn and fix things between them.

Noone’s going to laugh at you, if you make an honest attempt.

At worst they’ll just pass you over on this occasion.

At best they’ll admire your persistence in even giving it a go.

And trust me, the second time is ALWAYS so much better.

For a little help on getting there though, try one of my free courses