better work is a personal development newsletter that teaches high-performers how to put themselves first (without the guilt) so that they can show up for the people they love.
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β Why accepting failure feels impossible [better work #7]
Published 16 days agoΒ β’Β 8 min read
better workissue #7
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β Why accepting failure feels impossible (and how to bridge the gap)
π Hey, it's Susan. Welcome to better work- a personal development newsletter for high-performers who put themselves first so that they can show up for the people they love.
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High-performers are allergic to failure. π€§ Intellectually, they know that failure is part of the process, even a form of success. But when they're used to succeeding all of the time, why accept the failure-kind-of-success when they can shoot for the success-kind-of-success?
When they inevitably experience their first failure, the ground is pulled out from under them. But it's not the failure itself that sends them down a spiral. It's the story they tell themselves from the beginning.
We love a success story. Specifically, we love finding out how they did it so we can replicate that success for ourselves.
But there's one thing that every success story has in common: the key to their success was one simple strategy.
π Oooh this is going to be juicy. This strategy is going to be so groundbreaking that we'll smack ourselves on the forehead and say "Why didn't I think of that?!"
They reveal the one simple strategy as:
I surrounded myself with the right people
I stayed consistent
I provided value
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OK, not so groundbreaking. But we try to replicate this simple strategy anyway because they must know something we don't.
Why is this taking so long? I'm doing something wrong. I'm not meant to do this. This is embarrassing.
Your knee-jerk reaction to failure is to be hard on yourself because your past achievements were rooted in shame.
Beat yourself up hard enough, yell at yourself loud enough, and maybe, just maybe, you'll come close to being good enough.
βΈοΈ But if you pause and take a closer look at those viral success stories, two additional variables tipped the odds in their favor, and they are not easy to replicate.
These two variables of success are corporate clout and lucky timing. Let's dig into these two variables and talk about why no one else is talking about them.
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πΌ Variable #1: Corporate Clout
Lenny Rachitsky has over a million newsletter subscribers, and it only took him five years.
For context, the email marketing company Mailchimp reported an average of 4,810 subscribers for B2B businesses. Lenny surpassed that number with 6,000 subscribers in his first year of business.
You probably never heard of Lenny.
π‘ But I bet you've heard of Airbnb.
In 2019, Lenny published his first Medium article titled What Seven Years at Airbnb Taught Me About Building a Business. This article went viral and currently has over 30,000 claps (Medium's version of likes). He published a few more articles on Medium before he started his own newsletter and it was history after that.
As opposed to what? Shitty content people don't want to share?
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Look, I have nothing against Lenny. I don't know him and I doubt he knows I exist. What he built was impressive and I have a newsletter too so of course I wanted to learn from him.
I read his Medium article. While it's well-written and thorough, there is nothing particularly groundbreaking about the content.
What played well in Lenny's favor was name-dropping Airbnb. Sharing the inside scoop on a unicorn startup is enticing, especially for Medium's reader base.
Lenny fed the Medium algorithm and the algorithm fed him back.
I'm not saying that name-dropping Airbnb was the only reason for his success. But we can't ignore how corporate clout played a significant role in the virality of his article. Virality helps when you know how to leverage it for momentum (more on this in variable #2 below).
If the article was titled "What Seven Years at Horken-Dorken-Co Taught Me About Building a Business," would it have gotten as much attention?
It's hard to deny that we want that type of status. Not because we need external validation.
Status just makes things easier.
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β Variable #2: Lucky Timing
The second variable of success that we don't talk about enough is lucky timing. Let's illustrate this variable with something fun: Mario Kart.
Mario Kart is a beloved racing video game where players compete on a racetrack while using power-up items to gain advantages.
π The ultimate power-up is the star. The star instantly boosts your speed and allows you to blow past every obstacle (including other players). You're temporarily invincible.
You don't need the star to win. But the star can be incredibly advantageous, especially if you were lagging behind.
While you need a combination of skill and luck to make the most of the star power-up, getting the star in the first place is lucky timing.
π High-performers rarely consider luck when they plan.
They want to believe that if they work hard, then they will get what they deserve.
Luck feels random, irresponsible, and out of control. I'll bet you're not a gambler. π°
No matter how much you plan and how hard you work, luck can change the outcome. Ignoring that reality sets you up for failure because you won't manage your expectations.
It's not the lack of success that kills our growth - it's the stories we tell ourselves.
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π¬ The Story I Told Myself
I didn't go to an Ivy League school and I never worked for a Fortune 500 company.
I'm a self-taught entrepreneur who isn't considered successful by industry standards.
The story I initially told myself was that if I was smart and savvy enough, I could replicate someone else's strategy of 'providing value' and I'll be successful too.
When that strategy didn't work, I thought that I wasn't providing value.
Therefore, I wasn't valuable.
The messy lesson β‘οΈ my failures were not a reflection of my efforts, and my efforts were not a reflection of my identity.
After all, it's easy to provide value when your name is the value.
If you had a choice between getting paid $500,000 in cash or lunch with Jay-Z, which would you choose?
Jay-Z himself answered, "You got to take the money."
Picking Jay-Z's brain is priceless. But Jay-Z said the blueprint of his success is already in his albums. If you listen to the albums and piece it together, you'll have the answers you need (from Jay-Z anyway).
This is a reminder that information is useless without action.
I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man.
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-Jay-Z, Diamonds from Sierra Leone
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The real problem I had early on in my business was not giving myself enough time. I was used to hitting my goals quickly, and I expected nothing less of myself when I started my business.
I told myself the story that if I didn't get it right fast enough, then I wasn't good enough.
At the bottom of this spiral, I gave myself lots of permission to not show up. I was tired, I had a headache, I shouldn't spend the money, I need to wash my hair, etc.
What helped was flipping this on its head: I was harder on myself about showing up and gentler on myself about the outcomes.
We're so busy perfecting our strategy and execution that we miss that we're playing an entirely different game with hidden obstacles.
π A funny example of this is when my cousin had a balloon-blowing contest during her wedding reception: one of the contestants nearly passed out from blowing his balloon because there was a tiny hole in it.
You can have the right resources with the right plan and still be stuck. You can feel that something is off, but you can't see it.
π That's why I created The High-Performer's Blind Spot Quiz.
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There's nothing wrong with overthinking, people-pleasing, or perfectionism (former recovering perfectionist over here ππΌ).
You do know what you want, but you've been conditioned to suppress your desires. You know who you are, but you're grieving a big part of your identity that just ended. You're already successful, but you're bored out of your fucking mind.
π‘ Ready to discover what's really holding you back?
Not some generic advice, but your specific blind spot that's keeping your success just out of reach.
Do you have an event, launch, or freebie that you want to share with the world? Let's feature it in better work!
Take this as a sign from the Universe that you shouldn't build alone.
Reply to this email and tell me more about it.
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π Motherload is looking for writers!
Got a story to share that isn't centered around raising kids, but the woman behind it all?
βοΈ Motherload will be looking for writers to share their stories on Substack in 2025.
More details are coming, but if you already know you want to be a part of this, reply to this email with the word "writer."
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better work is a personal development newsletter that teaches high-performers how to put themselves first (without the guilt) so that they can show up for the people they love.
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