| The case for displaying your failures |
| | Good morning,
Melissa Bernstein, the co-founder of educational-toy company Melissa & Doug, was a perfectionist from the start.
As a kid, everything she tried, she wanted to master. Every grade had to be an A. "Life was very black and white. It was success or it was failure," Bernstein said on Inc.'s What I Know podcast this week. "I believed once something was put in the 'failure' bucket, it was there forever."
Bernstein was terrified of taking risks, because she was terrified of failing. This bore out in her entrepreneurial career: After launching Melissa & Doug, she designed dozens of product ideas per week, and then felt crushed if one of them hit shelves and didn’t sell out. As her business grew, she began to realize that very few of her designs would become such huge commercial successes that they'd remain on shelves for years. And that’s when she began to change how she looked at flops.
Today, behind Bernstein’s desk is a shelf full of her “failure” toys that didn’t sell or make it to market--and she’s proud of seeing them every day. Listen to this week’s episode of What I Know to learn how Bernstein reframed failure and shifted the trajectory of her now-iconic $500 million business. |
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