Latest news with #failure
Globe and Mail
18 hours ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Kwesi Alleyne Urges Entrepreneurs to Embrace Self-Awareness Over Hustle Hype
Marketing leader and coach encourages business owners to slow down, reflect, and rethink failure as a growth tool. Kwesi Alleyne, co-founder of Herculeads Marketing Group and youth soccer coach, is calling on entrepreneurs, coaches, and creatives alike to embrace a more honest, self-aware approach to growth. Based on insights shared in his recent interview 'Focus, Failure, and Forward Momentum,' Alleyne emphasises that reflection—not constant hustle—is the key to building something sustainable. 'People talk about grinding 24/7,' Alleyne says, 'but if you're not stopping to ask yourself what worked and what didn't, you're just repeating noise. My business started growing faster the minute I got serious about reviewing why we won and why we lost.' Alleyne's message comes at a time when burnout is at an all-time high. According to a 2024 Deloitte survey, 59% of workers reported feeling exhausted regularly, and 42% of entrepreneurs cite mental fatigue as their top challenge. Alleyne believes that's partially due to the glorification of relentless work, rather than smarter reflection. Failure Isn't the Enemy—Lack of Reflection Is In the interview, Alleyne shared how a failed campaign helped sharpen his agency's research process. 'We launched a niche lead-gen campaign without testing demand. It flopped. We refunded the client and owned it. That one mistake now drives how we qualify every new idea. We don't guess—we listen first.' This attitude is what Alleyne believes more leaders need to adopt: failure as fuel rather than shame. 'You don't grow from never messing up. You grow by asking why you did—and doing something about it,' he adds. A Call for Thoughtful Leadership As Director of Marketing at Herculeads, Alleyne leads national campaigns for home improvement clients. But his leadership lessons are often drawn from the soccer field, where he coaches high school and travel teams in Florida. 'I see it in my players too. When they lose, they either shut down or they level up. The difference? Who's willing to watch the tape.' He encourages leaders, regardless of industry, to 'review your own game tape weekly.' Alleyne recommends building a simple review habit: Ask: What did we expect? Look: What actually happened? Act: What will we do differently next time? Rethink Busy. Focus on Better. Alleyne also advocates for managing distraction—not just time. 'I schedule my distractions,' he said. 'Fifteen minutes to scroll guilt-free. That way I don't leak energy all day.' He's not alone. A 2025 McKinsey study found that workers who structure their breaks and deep work sessions report 28% higher productivity than those who don't. Take Action: Reflect First Kwesi Alleyne is not pushing another app, trend, or hustle strategy. He's asking people to pause. Think. Evaluate. Reset. 'This isn't about being perfect or doing more,' he says. 'It's about being real with where you are and honest about what needs fixing.' His challenge to others? 'Pick one thing that didn't go your way last week. Ask yourself why—and write down one thing you'll change because of it. Do that every week. Watch what happens.' To read more, visit the website here. About Kwesi Alleyne: Kwesi Alleyne is a marketing entrepreneur and youth soccer coach based in Hollywood, Florida. He is a founding partner of Herculeads Marketing Group, a lead-generation firm serving home improvement businesses nationwide. Off the field, he is passionate about mentoring athletes and helping young leaders build discipline, clarity, and confidence through sports and business. Media Contact: Kwesi Alleyne Director of Marketing, Herculeads kwesialleyne@ Media Contact Contact Person: Kwesi Alleyne Email: Send Email Country: United States Website:
Fast Company
3 days ago
- General
- Fast Company
The value of ‘almost.' Why near misses can make or break you
Whether we like it or not, we live in a world that is ruthlessly optimized to reward results. Nonetheless, failure is a part of everyone's life—and an essential part of achievement in fields ranging from sports to science. In fact, high achievers are those who fail more often —not less—than the average person. They take more risks, go outside their comfort zone, set more challenging goals, and engage more frequently and vigorously in improving their performance—and this is how they succeed. You can't lose if you never play—you also can't win. Runner-up But what about coming in second? Is there value to the 'near miss'—to being so close to a win, but falling short? In education, being salutatorian is impressive. But it still means you miss out on the valedictory speech and its attendant scholarship. A high spot on the university waitig list rarely becomes an enrollment offer. In careers, the runner-up performer might earn a congratulatory email but not the promotion or hefty salary increase; the second-best job interview candidate gets little consolation from knowing they almost received a job offer but are still unemployed. Salespeople who hit 99% of their quota still forfeit the Hawaiian-vacation incentive and bonus. In research, the lab that publishes second loses the patent, the grant, and the headlines. And if you are the runner-up in a presidential election, there's at best a slim chance you can run again in the future, and your popularity may actually decrease after losing (in politics, this loser effect leads to a dip in confidence from voters, and there's often no time for a second chance). Near misses as opportunity And yet, near misses are not as disastrous as the above thought experiments suggest. Indeed, finishing a hair's breadth behind the winner still means you've outperformed almost everyone else—be they hundreds of classmates, thousands of job applicants, or an entire electorate. Moreover, the person who edges you out isn't necessarily better on merit alone —factors like political currents, privilege, or just plain luck can tip the scales. Perhaps most importantly, coming up just short can serve as a springboard for growth, offering the chance to learn, adapt, and come back stronger—provided you choose to seize it. Here's why: Lessons learned First, while everyone prefers success to failure, it is often easier to learn from failure than from success. Success tells you that you are great; it is the socially accepted way to provide you with positive feedback on your talents, reinforcing your self-belief, and inflating your ego. While this sounds great—and without much in the way of downside—success is also likely to generate complacency, overconfidence, and arrogance (it's much easier to stay humble in defeat). Conversely, failures are opportunities to learn, especially when you see them as learning experiments that provide you with critical feedback on your skills, choices, and behaviors. As Niels Bohr wisely noted, 'An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.' In short, a near miss can act as an inherently, if brutally honest audit of your assumptions and strategies—uncovering blind spots that success tends to conceal. By forcing you—or at least inviting you—to diagnose exactly why you fell short, a near miss suggests you refine your mental models; rethink and tweak your tactics; and build new, better tested, decision-making muscles. Failing enthusiastically Second, failure increases the gap between your aspirational self (who you want to be) and your actual self (who you are, at least from a reputational standpoint). This uncomfortable psychological gap is only reduced through hard work, grit, and persistence, which together strengthen your chances of succeeding in the future. At the very least, they help you become a better version of yourself, even if you don't succeed in achieving a sought-after prize or goal. As Winston Churchill famously noted, 'Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.' Importantly, near misses can be a powerful form of failure precisely because they hurt the most. Being so close to a success can reaffirm your determination and reignite your ambition. Every extraordinary achiever (across fields) differs from others in one important way: they are less likely to be satisfied with their achievements. Indeed, the most common reason people fail to learn from failure is that they are too wounded or hurt by their lack of success, to the point that it extinguishes their drive. In contrast, extraordinary achievers will not give up or let go—even when their failures are hard to digest. This ambitious mindset helps them seek to understand the factors leading to their near misses without getting deflated or depressed by them. Instead, it makes them even hungrier for victory, resilient, and focused on bouncing back stronger. Emotionally resilient Third, the way you respond to any form of defeat or failure, and especially the painful near misses, sends a powerful signal to everyone around you—investors, bosses, or teammates—that you're emotionally mature, resilient, and coachable. Humans have a general tendency to attribute their successes to their own talents and merit, while blaming others, or situations, for their failures and misses. Avoiding this tendency makes you an exception to the norm. This will be noticed and will impress others. While resilience is largely a function of your personality (the more emotionally stable, extroverted, curious, agreeable, and especially conscientious you are, the more resilience you will show), we can all work to increase our resilience if we truly care about achieving our end goal, by becoming grittier and harnessing whatever mental toughness we have. When you dissect a near miss with curiosity and humility, you demonstrate a growth mindset that invites collaboration and sparks confidence in your potential. Visible resilience often earns more credibility (and resources) than a flawless run, because it shows you're willing to learn in public. Over time, people who witness your thoughtful rebound become your strongest advocates, eager to back the next iteration of your vision. Life, despite how it feels in disappointing moments, is not a final exam but a continuous assessment; what matters most is not brilliant one-off successes but reliable, steady, determined excellence. As Aristotle pointed out, 'We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.' Greater legacies To be sure, there's no shortage of prominent historical figures who confirm how near misses and other kinds of failures in their early career stages were poor indicators of their actual talent and potential but instead unfortunate or unlucky episodes, uncharacteristic of their brilliance. Consider Roger Federer: after six runner-up finishes on tour, he finally lifted Wimbledon's trophy in 2003 and would go on to amass 20 Grand Slam titles. The Netherlands of 1974, whose Total Football lost the final, rewrote soccer's playbook. J.K. Rowling, turned down by 12 publishers, went on to sell over 600 million Harry Potter copies. Barbara McClintock, whose 'jumping genes' work was ignored for decades, earned a 1983 Nobel Prize for the discovery. Meryl Streep, whose first Oscar nod in 1979 went unrewarded, has since racked up 21 nominations and 3 wins. The Beatles were rejected by Decca as 'yesterday's sound' before selling some 1.6 billion records. And Alibaba, once dwarfed by eBay in China, now serves over a billion annual active consumers. Each of these (and many other) examples provide evidence that near misses can herald even greater legacies. Ultimately, the sting of 'almost' is less a verdict on your potential than an invitation to hone it. Near misses aren't life sentences—they're signposts pointing to gaps in your strategy, fuel for your ambition, and a live demonstration of your character to the world. While it is tempting to ruminate about what could have or should have happened, the truth is we never know. We all indulge in counterfactual fantasies—those 'what if' spirals where we picture an alternate universe in which we married someone else, took the other job, or moved to that city. Psychologists call them sliding doors moments: innocuous-seeming forks in the road that, in hindsight, feel like cosmic turning points. But while it's human to ruminate, it's wiser to remember that we're not omniscient authors of our own lives. The illusion of total control is just that—an illusion. More often than not, the best way to recover from regret or disappointment is not by obsessing over the road not taken, but by taking a different road. Que será, será. Life is less about scripting your destiny than adapting to its plot twists. In other words, how you react to failure matters, but failure is too brutal and negative a word for simply not getting what you think you preferred or wanted, especially when it may not even be what you actually needed or ought to have preferred. When we embrace each narrow defeat as data, not destiny, we are able to build the very habits and resilience that turn 'almost' into subsequent undeniable success. As the saying goes, experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. We add that experience can be more valuable than the objective success of getting what you wanted. In fact, enjoyment of objectives successes including of awards and victories, tends to be more short-lived than we expect. We need not define ourselves by our past and present achievements. Who we are also comprises our future self, including our possible selves—the parts of our character and identity that are actually the only ones we can influence.
Forbes
10-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Don't Sweep Failure Under The Rug: It May Be Keeping You From Success
Lego Secrets to Success Working this week with one of the great tech companies, we reviewed a pivotal approach to addressing failure. As we explored how to build and sustain an innovative culture, we kept talking about the dangers of sweeping failures under the rug. Most companies do it, and as a result, most companies fail to learn the truly valuable lessons that could accelerate their success. Consider the contrast trajectories of Playmobile and Lego. During the 1970s and 1980s Lego and Playmobile were of roughly comparable size. Although Lego was always slightly larger, today Lego dwarfs the size and popularity of Playmobile. One reason is Lego's attitude towards failure. In conversation with Lego's CEO, we discussed an early failure that accelerated their trajectory to the incredible Lego success of today. Lego had launched a product with a digital add-on, one of their first forays into the digital world. The product crashed and burned. Rather than blame the team who launched it or whisper in the hallway about the disaster, they sat down and did a careful, open, and positive post-mortem of what they learned from the experience. What rose to the surface proved truly transformative for Lego. The team realized that they lived in a product-based world where, if everyone does their job well, they make and ship products once. After it leaves the warehouse, they never see it or hear about it again. By contrast, in a digital world cycles are continuous. If you ship a digital product, it needs to be updated, improved, and evolved. Although this may seem obvious to digital native companies it proved vital to Lego's future success as they move into a digital future. More importantly, the process itself of purposefully trying to learn as much as possible at every juncture is the real secret to their success and the reason why today Lego is such breakout story. Although we are inclined to sweep a failure under the rug, redeeming the failure by focusing on what we learn could not only improve our current effort, but may provide the clue to breakout success we have been missing!
New York Times
10-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Roger Federer's commencement speech wasn't just a viral moment. It was masterful
Editor's Note: This story is a part of Peak, The Athletic's desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Follow Peak here. One day last June, during a steady rain on a chilly morning in New Hampshire, Roger Federer told a story about failure. Over the course of two decades, he emerged as one of the greatest tennis players who ever lived. He played 1,526 singles matches in his career and won almost 80 percent. He hoisted 20 Grand Slam trophies, including Wimbledon a record eight times. Advertisement 'Now, I have a question for you,' Federer said, looking out across a sea of umbrellas at the commencement ceremony for Dartmouth College. 'What percentage of points do you think I won in those matches?' He paused. 'Only 54 percent,' he said. It was one of those statistics that at first seemed incorrect. Federer was one of the most dominant athletic forces of this century. That guy lost nearly half of his points? 'When you lose every second point, on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot,' he told the crowd. 'You teach yourself to think, 'OK, I double-faulted. It's only a point.' When you're playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world, and it is. But when it's behind you, it's behind you. This mindset is really crucial, because it frees you to fully commit to the next point and the next point after that, with intensity, clarity and focus.' By the next day, the speech was everywhere, viewed by millions. Its message struck a chord with people from all walks of life, transcending the annual inspirational platitudes that define commencement season. Originally the province of valedictorians and honors graduates, the graduation speech has long been a platform for politicians, thinkers and CEOs. But in the last two decades, another popular category has emerged: star athletes. Just this year, former Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter spoke at the University of Michigan, former NBA stars Grant Hill and Carmelo Anthony delivered addresses at their alma maters — Duke and Syracuse, respectively — and Olympic gymnast Simone Biles gave the speech at Washington University in St. Louis. The American humorist Art Buchwald once mused that a commencement speech had an afterlife of 15 minutes. If you can even remember who spoke at your graduation, you probably don't remember much of what they said. Advertisement Or, as former Lakers great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar put it at Drew University in 2016: 'Lilacs are in bloom, love is in the air, and colleges and universities invite success stories like me to stand behind fancy podiums to convince parents and graduates that your education was worth the outrageous price.' But Federer's commencement address was something different — sincere, gracious, indelible — the sporting equivalent to Steve Jobs' famed commencement address at Stanford in 2005 or David Foster Wallace's speech, 'This is Water,' at Kenyon College the same year. When I mentioned the address to a colleague last month, he responded: 'I have referenced that speech like 20 times.' Ahead of the first anniversary of Federer's speech, I set out to answer a simple question: Why did it connect? Federer summed up his motivation for speaking at Dartmouth in two words: beer pong. The actual reason was more personal; his agent Tony Godsick is a Dartmouth alum and Godsick's daughter was a member of the 2024 class. But Federer understood that nearly every commencement speech features a few local shoutouts, in this case a mention of the EBA's chicken sandwich from Lou's and the local pastime, Pong, a drinking game said to have been invented by Dartmouth students. Federer's speech, which was 3,200 words and lasted 25 minutes, was structured to share three lessons — 'tennis lessons,' as Federer explained — all of which emanated from his long career and his own recent 'graduation' from tennis. The first lesson: Effortless is a myth. For as long as Federer dominated on court, commentators had remarked upon how easy he made it look. He glided around in balletic fashion, ripping one-handed backhands. He never seemed to sweat. But there was only one way, Federer explained, to make something look that easy. Advertisement 'It's not about having a gift,' he said. 'It's about having grit.' Federer's point was embodied in the address itself. He and his team spent six months working on the speech, sifting through drafts and making revisions. His delivery was tender and rehearsed. 'As many interviews as he's done, and as much as he's been in the public eye, you could tell he practiced,' said Vinay Reddy, a former chief speech writer for President Joe Biden. 'He put the time into not just going up there and reading something.' Reddy has written speeches for presidents and world leaders. He also played Division I tennis at Miami University of Ohio. As a kid, he would attend the ATP event in Cincinnati, camping out on the practice courts to watch Andre Agassi, Stefan Edberg and Ivan Lendl. Their talent was mesmerizing. But when Reddy listened to Federer speak about effortlessness, he thought about the deliberate practice — the drills, the reps, the hours — he witnessed on that practice court in Cincinnati. 'It's the things we tell ourselves growing up,' Reddy said. 'No matter what you do, just keep practicing, keep working, keep learning. There are just some things that are very enduring about discipline.' The structure of the speech was clear and clever, and the storytelling was compelling, Reddy said. Federer had something to say, and his earnest vulnerability allowed the message to break through. But there was another reason the address felt authentic: Federer opened up, sharing himself with the audience, at one point even jokingly referring to himself as 'Dr. Roger' instead of 'Dr. Federer.' 'One of the strategies that Federer uses that good leaders use is to crack the door,' said Stephen D. Cohen, a professor of business communication at Johns Hopkins. 'I always tell people, 'Don't feel like you have to swing the door wide open and feel like you have to share your deepest, darkest secrets. Your goal is to crack the door. To share a little piece of yourself.'' Federer's second lesson: It's only a point. It was here that he shared the story of his five-set loss to Rafael Nadal in the 2008 Wimbledon final, a match widely considered by many as one of the greatest of all time. Seeking his sixth consecutive Wimbledon title, Federer had lost the first two sets, clawed back into the match by winning tie-breaks in the third and fourth sets, only to lose 9-7 in an epic fifth, the match ending in the evening dusk. Advertisement 'You can work harder than you thought possible and still lose,' Federer said, before adding: 'Perfection is impossible.' It was at this moment that Federer referenced his career record and his percentage of points won: 54 percent. 'Negative energy is wasted energy,' Federer said. 'You want to become a master at overcoming hard moments.' If you lose one point, there's no use in wallowing, because there might be another point — a break point, a set point — that means more. The match is long. There's always time to come back. In classical rhetoric terms, the anecdote was an example of logos, or using a compelling statistic to appeal to logic. 'Because it's counterintuitive, those stats become noteworthy and set up the rest of his argument,' said James Holtje, a professional speech writer and adjunct professor at Columbia. In tennis, a small, consistent edge over your opponent can translate into big margins in the long run. Nadal, for instance, also won exactly 54 percent of his points. And when Carlos Alcaraz defeated Jannik Sinner on Sunday in the French Open final — in one of the greatest matches since the 2008 Wimbledon final — Alcaraz, the champion, actually won one fewer point than Sinner. It's an easy concept to apply to almost any field. In 2022, Ronald van Loon, a portfolio manager at BlackRock, authored a paper on the percentage of investment decisions that need to be correct to beat market benchmarks for returns. He researched markets, crunched the numbers and came up with a number: As low as 53 percent. Michael Kosta, a rotating host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central and a former professional tennis player, viewed the clip through the lens of a standup comedian. Federer may have only won 54 percent of his points, Kosta said, but he always seemed to win the points that mattered most. 'He always brought his best at the right time,' Kosta said. 'And that's an important part of comedy, too. You can have a rough five minutes in your set. You can lose the audience. But as long as you get them back by the end, I think that's kind of most important.' One of the most important parts of any speech or presentation is connecting with the audience. Cohen, the professor at Johns Hopkins, said Federer utilized a strategy he teaches: What's in it for them — or WIIFT. 'What Federer does here that is so powerful is he captures the moment and he understands what's keeping these students up at night,' Cohen said. 'It's the fact they're transitioning from one part of their life to another, just like Federer is transitioning from being a tennis pro and he has to figure out what comes next.' Advertisement Which set up Federer's final lesson: Life is bigger than the court. In an interview with ESPN's Chris McKendry last summer at Wimbledon, Federer explained he had two goals. He wanted to have fun and keep the audience awake. 'That's also my take on life,' he said. 'It's like, 'We got to have fun along the way.' ' When Federer was 14, he left home in Basel to attend a school in the French part of Switzerland. He was homesick at first, but he came to appreciate the act of exploration, of traveling the world, experiencing new cultures and undertaking what he called 'life on the move.' He also had a realization: 'I knew that tennis could show me the world. But tennis could never be the world.' The graduates before him would be record-breakers and world travelers, leaders and philanthropists. In other words, they were going places, and if they ever saw him in the future, he said, they should say hi. As Federer concluded his speech in the rain, he finished up his 'tennis lessons' and pivoted to something fun — a real tennis lesson. He stood on stage and clutched a racket in his hand, suggested an Eastern grip and showcased the proper placement for your knuckles, which, he said, should allow for easy switching from forehand to backhand. He extolled the paramount importance of footwork on the court, same with the takeback and the follow through. He flashed a grin. 'No, this is not a metaphor,' he said. 'It's just good technique.' Rustin Dodd is a senior writer for Peak. He last wrote about his experience a secret to workplace happiness. Follow Peak here. (Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
MJ's Motivation: 'Failing forwards vs backwards'
Think about a recent setback you've gone through and ask yourself, 'How did I respond?'Chances are, one of two things happened: You either ran from it, trying to avoid the discomfort or you embraced it, recognizing there was something to is the difference between failing forward and failing others, repeating mistakes or giving up: That is failing taking responsibility, learning from mistakes or building a sense of perseverance: That is failing really comes down to how we respond, not the experience itself. For some, failure accelerates progress acting as fuel. For others it becomes a barrier. We will fail again. Every one of this point on, commit to doing whatever it takes to fail forward. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
