We don’t act because we don’t want to fail.

We want a perfect record for everything we do.

The only way to consistently succeed in life is to go through a lot of failures. Smart salespeople know this.

That’s why they celebrate when a client says no. They know that they need to pass through failures and several nos, to get to their yeses.

Instead of making failure for the reason of their inaction, they reflect on the failure to learn, decide to not repeat the same mistakes and increase their yes percentages with each subsequent interface with a customer.

If you want to design a life where you succeed a lot – then design it in such a way that it lets you take a shot and fail quickly again and again at whatever you are after. 

Want to be a good writer? Then write a daily blog, or publish a daily vlog or a video. Put yourself up to public test everyday.

Want to build a successful business? Then identify one metric that matters for your business and then take action every day that takes you closer to that metric.

My friend Noah Kagan, who was an early employee at Facebook did it for his business. Inspired by Mark Zuckerberg, he taught his team to focus on only one goal per year. In 2014 his goal was 1 billion visitors across Sumo. In 2015 he aimed for $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). In 2016 he went for $5 million in ARR. every action he and his colleagues took was towards this one goal. Noah is quant focused on achieving his goals and breaks his annual goals into monthly, weekly and daily goals.

Considering holidays and 5 day work week, you’ll have about 200 days to achieve whatever business goals you have for your business. For $1 million in ARR that will mean $5k/day. Now identify what actions will take you towards this goal.

Is it calling one new prospect every day or meeting one every day? Or you have an eCommerce business and make $1 for each visit to your online store. Then take daily action towards building your site’s traffic to 5000 visits a day.

Want to be a good public speaker? Put yourself where you’ll fail every day that is in front of an audience. Once you have decided what you need to do, you can work out the logistics. Like for public speaking, you can start with Toastmasters.