“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” – George Bernard Shaw
“But what if I get it wrong?”
That’s the question I hear most, when I encourage creatives to try new things, to run experiments. And to put work out there, even when it isn’t perfect.
The answer to this is pretty simple. You apologise. You make it right. You learn from it. And then you move on.
No one enjoys failing in public.
Please remember that for the most part, hardly anyone will notice when you mess up. Even if they do notice, most people are kind. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had a friendly email to tell me a link is broken on my website, or I’ve had some other technical hitch.
I’ve learned not to let my perfectionist streak paralyse me, and I’ve grown much more comfortable about building in public.
Mistakes are how we learn.
And mostly, it doesn’t matter that much. But in the hyper-connected digital world, mistakes can sometimes get amplified quickly. There is a (very) tiny chance that people will pile on, and you might get cancelled. Or become a meme, a figure of fun.
So it might feel easier to stay small and invisible, to play safe and avoid trying new things. Or to polish and polish until you’re sure it’s good enough, thus depriving the world of your work and yourself the chance to learn and grow.
Even mistakes that feel major can be corrected.
I recently noticed two very graceful examples of public pivots. I thought it might help to share them here.
In 2012, Dom Bridges launched a range of products made with seaweed and other natural ingredients from the beaches and countryside around Margate in Kent. He called his brand Haeckels, inspired by the beautiful, detailed drawings of the natural world by the 19th century German scientist Ernst Haeckel.
I interviewed Dom for Coast magazine, not long after he opened his first shop. He was passionate about growing a brand that would employ local people, use natural ingredients, and take innovative approaches to selling and packaging its products, from skincare and scents to candles.
It’s been fun watching him grow a scrappy little idea he started at home into a thriving brand that sells worldwide and now employs 60 people.
And then he blew up everything he’d built.
It turns out that Ernst Haeckel had some abhorrent theories about race. Long after his death in 1919, some of his ideas and language were taken up by the Nazis to justify their even more abhorrent actions.
Dom hadn’t know this when he named his brand. But by 2024, he did know. And as he said in the open letter he published last November, “Knowledge obligates action.”
So this year, the company Formerly Known As Haeckels will operate without a name while it embarks on “honest conversations about what our identity should be”. Dom explains more about the decision in this admirably honest video.
This could have been a disaster.
Instead, the brand is trying to turn it into an opportunity, a chance to reset and rebuild even better.
Their website still has the same domain name for now, but it’s been redesigned without using the name Haeckels. As has the compostable packaging their products now come in.
They’re offering radical transparency about everything from the cost of making their products to the packaging, and a chance for customers to become more closely involved with the company through an innovative “citizenship” programme.
“It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick,” Dom wrote in his open letter. “But we know we have to do it if we want to avoid moral bankruptcy as well as a financial one.”
Another example of a graceful u-turn.
I often mention Josh Spector here, and link to his useful, short daily newsletter. I’ve learned a lot from him about marketing creative work, and attracting clients through content.
Pretty much since its launch, I’ve had a $350 annual subscription to his Skill Sessions: a series of useful, actionable hour-long workshops teaching specific skills around marketing. They’re great, and if you have a newsletter or attract clients by creating and posting content, I heartily recommend them.
But this year, I didn’t renew. There was a substantial price hike, and he added coaching services into the mix. It’s not that I don’t think his content and guidance is worth it. It’s hugely valuable, and if I was just starting out, I would have signed up to the new price without hesitation.
But the new package wasn’t right for me.
I’m entering the later phase of my working life, when I’m starting to consider doing less, not more. Investing $999 a year on audience growth didn’t make sense for me, so I sent an email thanking him for all I’d learned from him, and wishing him well. Then I bowed out and thought no more of it.
Until a few weeks ago, when Josh published a blog post that must have been very hard to write. It’s worth reading, as an example of an elegant, public u-turn. He’s back-tracking on the price rise, and offering access to all the recorded Skill Sessions as well as a year of new ones from just $99. This is even cheaper than before, and an absolute bargain in my view.
For him, this was about his own feelings.
“There was no magic moment when I decided I needed to pivot,” he explains. “It just didn’t feel like things were headed in the right direction.”
The higher price point wasn’t a failure from a business point of view. “There are infinite ways to succeed and I believe the pivot [to a higher price point] could have worked well – it was far from a disaster.
“But I decided it was shifting the way I worked with people and who I worked with, and that wasn’t aligned with what I ultimately enjoy. So it wasn’t the right direction for me.
“That said, I knew the logistics involved in switching back would be a pain, so I wasn’t looking forward to that part. And I didn’t know for sure how people would respond – or if it would ultimately be a good move. But we never know that so I’m comfortable with rolling the dice.”
Perhaps some saw this as weakness.
But I saw it as strength. It’s not easy to backtrack so gracefully. I signed up again immediately. And apparently I wasn’t alone.
“The response has been fantastic,” Josh says. “People loved the blog post (clients and non clients), and what I said resonated with a lot of my audience. Many clients came back and many new ones joined at the new more affordable price point.
“I also realised there’s a lot of interest in selling lower-priced products and optimising for the type of work you want to do which bodes well for the future as I move forward (I hope). It’s still too early to see what the ultimate result will be, but all the signs so far are encouraging.”
So what do you do if/when you make mistakes?
Most of the time, it’s just a case of correcting and moving on. In the digital world especially, we expect to see multiple iterations of the same idea/product/project.
Just make sure you look after your most loyal customers and fans. If I improve something I’ve already sold, I always offer the new version free or at a reduced cost to people who paid for the old one.
With digital products, this is pretty painless. But even with bigger creative projects, it’s not necessarily carved in stone. We’re now accustomed to hearing multiple remixes of songs, seeing director’s cuts of films, or downloading bonus chapters of books.
How correct a mistake.
The steps are simple. Though not always easy!
1: Take responsibility.
Own your mistakes. No extended excuses. No blaming others. No self-justification.
2: Apologise, if needs be.
Do this immediately, and sincerely.
Don’t make it all about you and your feelings. Acknowledge the effect your actions had on others, and how it made them feel.
3: Take action.
Act as quickly as possible to minimise any harm caused by your mistake. If there’s a way of making good, do it.
If there isn’t, be clear on how you’ll do better moving forward. People are surprisingly forgiving when you do this.
4: Use what you’ve learned.
You can beat yourself up for mistakes. Or you can learn from them, move on, and build something better.
Only one of these makes your work – and the world – a better place.
What do you think?