The Good Stuff

I love failure. Yeah, you read that right. I love failure; I live to fail. I enjoy every moment of it. But I wasn’t always like this. I hated it and I allowed it to consume me to the point of paralysis once. Never again. This is what I’ve learned…

If I received a penny for every time I failed, I’d be a millionaire by now. Most people view failure like it’s something evil. Failure means progress. It means that you’re doing something, it means that you’re working and you’re moving forward. The trick is not to let the failure consume or define you. You have to embrace it and learn from it, but if you allow it to consume you, then you really have failed. 

Hard Fails and Soft Fails

There are hard fails and soft fails, and I’ve had both. The soft fails are those I can quickly learn from and continue to refine whatever it is I’m working on, but the hard fails… those hurt, big time. The bigger the risk, the harder the fail, should you fail. Sometimes, you succeed when you risk big, but at some point, you make a decision that leads to a fail, sometimes a big fail. I’ve found that this is the hardest of them all to accept and recover from, because it blindsides you while you’re on your success high; and let’s face it, these fails humble you. 

I’ve failed a lot, but only experienced a hard, paralysing fail from a massive risk once. So what caused that fail? I listened to someone else, when I should have listened to myself; but if you’re in a partnership, you’re supposed to listen to the other partners and not be a control freak right? Sometimes, that’s not the case. If your gut screams something, listen intently. Learn from my mistake. If you’re a good judge of situations, and you’re good at assessing risk (this only comes with practice) then listen to your own intuition. Don’t be ignorant if you’re unsure. Admit to yourself that you’re unsure and let someone who is sure take the reins. Don’t get cocky because this will ensure you never recover from a fail (because you’ll be ignorant and blame everyone else but yourself); and this impacts everyone else who is affected by that fail. 

Rock Bottom is The Foundation of Success

Rock bottom is the most sturdy foundation you will ever have, because it’s full of all your fails, lessons and experience. Rock bottom is somewhere I’m uniquely familiar with. I’ve hit rock bottom, hard, more than once and I’ll continue to hit it, if only to get back up, dust myself off and try again. I’ve learned this most recently at pole dance. There are so many soft fails. I’ll try a trick or spin, and my form is shit; especially on the left side. But, the soft fails are about refining the technique until you get it right. And the interesting part is you can get it today, and not get it tomorrow, or the day after, and possibly not even the week after! You just have to keep trying it over and over until you get it again. It’s all part of the process and I enjoy it because I know that I’ll get it right the more I fail. 

This has taught me how to deal with the hard fails; the ones that cripple you. When you’ve had a paralysing hard fail and you’re done licking your wounds and feeling sorry for yourself, go do something that has soft fails so you’ll rebuild that confidence and familiarity with discomfort. And soon enough, you’ll find yourself wanting to do exactly what landed you that hard fail, but this time, you’re armed with the knowledge, experience and expertise of your hard fail process. 

Comfort is the Enemy of Success

To succeed is to have an intimate knowledge of and strong relationship with discomfort. I have the rare ability to enjoy discomfort. I don’t like being comfortable; for me, that’s a sign of complacency and giving up, settling.  I hate the idea of settling… it’s unsettling. And it’s unsettling because I know that it is the antagonist of success. Sometimes, you will have to celebrate tiny successes over a long period of failure, and other times, you will experience a great success virtually overnight. Enjoy the process. Enjoy the pain. Enjoy the suffering because you know to yourself that no matter what, you’re failing forward and failure is progress. 

Writing this piece was difficult. It took me two days of staring at a blank canvas, not “knowing” where to start because it meant that I had to face my failures and use them as writing putty. Even now, some of the small fails hurt. And it does not help that I’m writing this after failing at a lunge via a dislocated kneecap. Failure is daily for me; but I would not have it any other way. 

If you want to support my writing and assist my journey of persistent failure and discomfort, feel free to donate 🙂 It helps me dedicate more time and increase the quality of content.

Stay humble. Stay uncomfortable. And keep failing. 

Throughout history, the industrialisation of the work force has evolved. We have seen a shift from coal workers to factory line workers, then the intense rise in technology and the creative industries which brought freelancing to the forefront. Twenty years ago, no one would have thought freelancing could be a career. Heck, eight years ago, I didn’t think it. A full time freelancer? Me? HA. Never. How could anyone survive on money from freelancing? But today, some of my more financially stable friends are freelancers. More companies are outsourcing key resources to freelancers. So, what does this mean for the workforce? Are we experiencing another major workforce change?

Enter Stage Centre: The Gig Economy

There is a part of me that hates that phrase, ‘the gig economy’. Mainly because like ‘millennial’, it’s vastly overused and often in the wrong context. But this is what is fuelling such a change in the economic landscape. Look at me, talking about economics like I went to Harvard! But I actually do know a thing or two about it, having not only been a freelancer, but now having worked with a company that’s fuelling this change in landscape. I sit on both sides of the fence with this one.

So, what is all the fuss about? In a nutshell, the gig economy is focused on freelancers. Now this became an ‘economy’ when more companies started outsourcing certain tasks rather than hiring another company, agency or an in-house resource to do it; these included website development, graphic and video content creation, copywriting, and even customer service.

Today, applications and websites like Upwork and Fiverr provide small businesses and startups with the ability to have a full team, without having to employ anyone. This saves a lot of money for the startup, as they do not have to pay for employee benefits, office space or equipment, and they do not have to pay for a full salary, since most freelancers work on an hourly rate or per project. That means, you don’t have an in-house resource with hours of their time spent twiddling their thumbs. Big thumbs up if you ask me.

But, isn’t stable employment more attractive?

Let’s think about it from the freelancer’s perspective. If they have a stable job, they are paid the industry standard. They are required to dedicate at least 8 hours a day to this company, travel to and from the office, and have very little control over their own schedule or their income.

The industry standard employment rates are a benchmark which is usually far lower than the earning potential of a freelancer. On the flip side, freelancers have to cover their own pension plans and health insurance, and they may not have paid holidays or a stable income. However, they can control these factors; and with skilful budgeting and finance management, they can control the flow of their income to a more stable stream. Everything is up to how dedicated, focused and resilient a freelancer is.

The Stress to Reward Ratio

The very attractive benefit of being a freelancer is your freedom of choice. As an employee, you do not always get to choose your superiors, but as a freelancer, you can always turn down future projects with a difficult client. This is what I like to call the stress to reward ratio. If the client is super stressful and pays awfully, then a freelancer has the choice to axe him, even if the project is a great one. If there is a difficult project with a somewhat difficult client, but the project pays really well, it’s up to the freelancer to decide if the reward is worth the stress involved. It’s always hard to tell from a glance whether a client is going to be trouble in the middle of a project (and this is where a client rating system can really help freelancers). The point is, the freelancer can choose who they want to work with; and this can be highly beneficial if a high number of those great clients become steady business.

Don’t take my word for it. You can do the numbers yourself. Take a look at UpWork and see what some people are earning in your field of expertise and crunch some numbers. Some fields aren’t suited to places like UpWork, but it can be useful for certain industries, like the creative/advertising industry. While it’s understandable that freelancing isn’t for everyone, it does beg to reason that if you could earn your entire month’s wage in one week as a freelancer, wouldn’t you take the plunge?