Max Simon Business Failures

May 23, 2012 Posted by Max Simon

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Today I want to talk very openly and very candidly about all the ways I’ve failed in my business…

And yes, I’ve had quite a few business failures and made my share of mistakes.

In fact, there have been times when my business failures put me on the verge of shutting the doors and closing my business. And one of my massive failures was just a few short months ago…

Today I want to talk very openly and very candidly about all the ways I’ve failed in my business…

And yes, I’ve had quite a few business failures and made my share of mistakes.

In fact, there have been times when my business failures put me on the verge of shutting the doors and closing my business. And one of my massive failures was just a few short months ago…

You might find it a little weird that I’m so open about my biggest business failures.

But it’s because I want you to understand that you are not alone.

Business is messy and out of control a lot of the time. You’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to struggle and stumble…

I just want you to realize that it happens to us all.

This is why I’m dedicating an entire Big Vision Show to the 3 biggest business failures I’ve had in the past few years.

So watch the video below and discover the very substantial business failures that happened to me – personally – and caused me to lose lots of money, end relationships, struggle massively in a personal or spiritual way. And ultimately fail…

I truly hope you can learn from my business mistakes.

And as always, if you loved this episode, hit the like button. Share it on Facebook and Twitter. Let everyone in the world know that it’s ok to make mistakes in business.

What have been some of the most powerful learning lessons you’ve gotten from the mistakes that you’ve made? Leave Your Comments Below…

Transcript of this episode:
In today’s episode of The Big Vision Show, I’m going to talk to you about all the ways I’ve failed.

Hi there, my name is Max Simon, the CEO and founder of Big Vision Business, and the other day somebody told me, “It always looks like you’re doing everything right. It always looks like you’ve got your act together.” That is definitely not what I want to portray to the world; because the truth of the matter is one, I definitely don’t have everything together and two, neither will you.

I think one of the big things that stops people in business is believing that somebody else has all the answers, or somebody else never makes any mistakes; so if you go out and try to play a big game then it’s not going to work out for you because you can’t ever get things all right.

In today’s video, I want to share with you the three biggest failures that I’ve had in just the last few years; and what I’ve learned from them so that you know I’m far from perfect myself.

First, I’ll start with a little story. You see, when I began my very first business, called “Self Centered,” because we were teaching people to get centered in themselves, I launched this business and this fancy website, and I spent all this money – $80,000 to be exact – on launching this business, this movement, this set of programs into the world that I thought was just so what everybody wanted and needed.

In fact, I was trying to make meditation cool; that was my goal. The thing that happened was, month after month I was putting out money and putting out money, and working and preparing and getting everything to look perfect. No money was coming back in. Every month, month after month, I was losing money and losing money and losing money until, after about 18 months, I lost my entire $80,000 inheritance – sorry, Grandma.

So my learning lesson from that was that you can’t keep doing something over and over again when it isn’t working.

You see, people were coming into my space that could help. Mentors were showing up that I could invest in, but I was so unwilling to look a the reality that what I was doing wasn’t working. I was so resistant to getting help, because I though I knew all the answers and I had it all figured out; that I just kept going down this downward spiral until I literally had lost all my money.

Now I will say that it was at that point, when I had literally hit bottom and failed miserably, that I also realized I can’t do my business alone. That’s when I started investing in coaches, investing in mentors, investing in going to events; and that’s literally when my business transformed.

My second real failure came when my dad got sick of a brain tumor. Even though it was so emotionally intense for me, I thought, “I’m just going to distract myself with work, and I’m going to launch new products. I’m going to keep charging ahead.”

What happened is because this incredibly emotional thing was happening, and I was trying to almost ignore it and just keep life moving on as usual, those product launches, those campaigns, those initiatives failed miserably.

We lost so much money during that time frame because instead of dealing emotionally with what was going on, instead of really healing and being present to what was happening, I was trying to distract myself with work and with the things that I knew. I was pushing and pushing and pushing; even though I was a master strategist, what I was doing was not working, it was not being felt.

It wasn’t carrying the energy that I knew is necessary to be effective, and we just – again – went in this terrible, terrible downward spiral until we almost had to shut our doors. The lesson I learned from that is that when you are going through something super intense, super crazy on a personal front, don’t push harder.

Let yourself just be in it. Settle things down. Become more gentle with what’s going on because if you try to push, my experience taught me that you’re just going to fail.

The third failure came from something that happened just a little while ago, when I got into a business agreement with some friends. Right from the beginning we didn’t have clear agreements, clear expectations, a clear understanding of how things would unfold; and more importantly, a clear understanding of what would happen if we decided not to keep moving forward.

When it inevitably fell apart, all of the sudden there was this big open gap of who was to blame, and who was responsible, and who should be getting what from it. It led to a really painful breakup.

Not only that, it actually led to having some legal advisors having to get involved, and having to pay out money forcefully. It was just a really painful and unfortunate process that not only ended the relationship – the friendship relationship between us – but flat-out sabotaged the project as well.

What I learned from that is that you absolutely must have clear, clean, and upfront agreements whenever you’re doing business with anybody; so that people are always 100% on the same page about the expectations, the agreements, the way things will unfold and how things can smoothly separate if you decide to go in your separate ways.

Those are three very substantial failures that happened to me personally, that caused me to lose lots of money and relationships, struggle massively in a personal or spiritual way, and ultimately fail. I wanted to share these with you simply so that you understood; you’re not alone.

Business is messy and out-of-control a lot of the time. Be okay to fail fast, be okay with the mistakes that you make; just learn from them. For today’s Big Vision question of the day, I’d love to hear what have been some of the most powerful learning lessons you’ve gotten from the mistakes that you’ve made?

Please share them as a comment below. I and everybody else in the tribe would love to hear them. And as always, if you loved this episode, hit the “Like” button, share it on Facebook and Twitter. Let everybody in the world know that it’s okay to make mistakes.

And if you’re new to our world, head on over to BigVisionBusiness.com. Become an inside member of this tribe. We’ll let you in on little intimate secrets of our world just like this. Thanks so much for your time. I look forward to reading your comments below, and I’ll see you in the next episode. Much love.