Step-by-Step Instructions

Click to print worksheet.

Welcome to the Failure Protocol. This exercise is the third and final step in your Offer Experiment design.

Problems it Solves

1. Makes failing suck less

Some experiments will fail, and failure always sucks. It's emotional. It hurts. It's difficult. This exercise will not eliminate all of the unpleasantness of failure, but it will alleviate some of it.

2. Decrease your recovery time

Any failure will require some amount of recovery and bounce-back time. By preparing for it before it happens, you'll be able to get through it faster so that you are moving towards your victory again as quickly as possible.

3. Helps ensure you don't give up

No founder ever quits when things are going well. But many give up too early when they face a failure that feels insurmountable.

Again, by preparing for that failure ahead of time, you are building a small trampoline beneath you so that you can bounce back more quickly. In doing so, you'll be much more likely to achieve your Victory.

Luck Favors the Well Prepared

Much like natural disasters, failures are inevitable. You can ignore them and fall victim to impending disaster, or you can prepare and recover faster.

"Fall down seven times, get up eight." - Japanese Proverb

We All Fail

Every single person who starts a company, fails. I have failed, everyone I know has failed. This is the name of the game.

You Will Fail

There are no two ways about it, you will fail. In fact, you are supposed to fail.

If you're not failing, you're not experimenting enough.

One of the goals of the FOCUS Framework is to help you identify failure so that you can course correct early. Failure is part of the process, another step along the road moving forward towards your victory. The faster you fail, the faster you move forward.

The thing is, it sucks to fail.

It feels awful. It's easy to take a failed experiment personally and feel like you are the failure.

You may look around and read about other founders getting funding, getting tons of traction and feel like you're the only one not succeeding. You may feel like it shouldn't happen to you because you're working so hard.

These are all normal reactions.

In fact, many founders even experience bouts of depression that can last for days or weeks.

Note: if you find yourself becoming stuck in these down times for longer periods of time, it's important to find support and talk to someone. If you are like many founders, you can feel like you are your company. The more passionate and invested you are in what you do, the more difficult it can be when you hit a rough patch. Watching your company fall apart can be like watching yourself fall apart. Know that if this happens, it's important you get the help you need.

Again, it is normal for it to hurt. And it's normal for you to need to take a break to get back the motivation to continue. I've personally faced times when I've had to take several months off to recover from particularly devastating failures: 3 months off after I killed Customer Acquisition Teams, 6 months off after OnCompare died, a year of soul searching after Nimbus Health's first go-round, etc.

The Failure Protocol is not designed to eliminate failure; it's designed to help you bounce-back from it faster.

The Failure Protocol

This exercise continues on the same worksheet you've been using for the Offer Experiment.

With the Success Metric Stoplight, you've already outlined what steps you'll take if your Offer Test meets your Green Light proceed metric and your Yellow Light optimize metric.

Now, you'll proactively determine what you'll do in the event your metric falls into the Red Light area - so you can take control of a failure.

Step 4

Take some time to reflect.

Your first step in eliminating these painful feelings associated with failure, is to take some time to actually feel them.

From personal experience, I have learned that trying to run away from them, distract myself, make myself "feel better", only prolongs the processing that needs to happen. Your reaction to this failure, or any failure you experience, is going to need to manifest itself.

The quickest way for you get back to iterating and having a clear thought process is to actually be with the feelings.

Reflection time is what you're going to do to really be with the failure and experience your emotions. It may be:

• Taking a walk in nature
• Getting a massage
• Go running
• Playing a round of golf by yourself
• Meditating
• Cooking

Anything that helps you take time with yourself and by yourself will do the trick. This may seem uncomfortable, but the faster you are able to be with it and deal with it, the faster you will be back on your feet.

In my case, my plan is to use meditation to help me be with this experience.

Step 5

Phone a friend.

Find someone to relate to about this failure. These are folks that you can relate to, but do not have any "skin in the game" with respect to your company. Write down people you can talk to openly about the failure, without fear of being judged.

If you have another founder to talk to, that can be helpful because it is likely they have experienced something similar.

Note: it's important you identify people who are fully supportive of you and your endeavors. If, for example, your family members aren't particularly supportive in your entrepreneurial endeavors, be sure to identify people outside of that circle to can confide in. During failure processing, you're looking for objective support, not critique, guilt or shame.

Write down two people who can fill this role for you.

Again, the goal is to help you process this failure more quickly. No doubt you can get through this on your own. But if you want to do it quickly and get back on the saddle, pull on your support system.

Step 6

Re-declare victory.

After encountering a failure, I find the process of Re-Declaring Victory both enjoyable, and therapeutic.

By the time you encounter failure, it's likely there has been a good bit of time since you first Declared Victory. That makes "post-failure" an opportune time to take a good look at what it is you really want to achieve for yourself by starting a company.

Even if you end up Re-Declaring the same victory you did your first time around...

Take advantage of this time to make sure you are on the right track and re-energize your efforts.

For now, leave this blank. You will fill this out later, while you are completing the Failure Protocol in the event of a failed experiment.

Step 7

Re-FOCUS.

At this point you will need to come to terms with a truth:

The path you were on was not your path to Victory.

The good news is you know that now, so you can find a path that is. This is your opportunity to pivot.

Now, before you're in the midst of failure, you are going to prepare yourself for this point. In essence, you are creating your emergency kit for when the hurricane comes.

In this step, write in the name of the exercise you will go back to in the FOCUS Framework if you encounter a failure.

You could go back to any of the exercises in this Offer Testing book or the Finding Early Adopters. You might think about an exercise where you started to make some assumptions you weren't quite sure about. Identify that exercise and commit to yourself that you will go back there as the starting point if you encounter a failure.

In my case, I'm saying that if I can't get a 2% click-through-rate on my Facebook ads then that is a red flag for me - something is definitely wrong. I am committing to going back to my 5-Interview Check Point from the Finding Early Adopters workbook.

If I encounter a failure here so severe that I'm not able to iterate my way to a successful Offer, it means that I've misunderstood my customers. I need to roll back and talk to more of them.

Recap

Now you have your first Failure Protocol. These are the steps that you will go through to make sure that when (not if) you face a failure, you will be able to rebound quickly and with increased focus.

You know how to make failure suck less by processing the often-ignored emotional tax that can stymie founders, and even cause some to give up, on their path to Victory.

You have a plan that will help you decrease your recovery time and get you back to iterating faster.

Finally, you have a plan that will help ensure you don't give up. By preparing yourself for the inevitable tough times associated with failures, you'll be able to withstand the emotional "hurricanes" they bring.

Remember, we all fail. You will fail. It is part of the process. Don't be a victim to failure: prepare for it, embrace it, and use it to move forward towards your Victory.

Most importantly, you are now 100% ready to go run your Offer Testing Experiment!

Based on your Offer Experiment worksheet you know:

• What offer to test
• When you'll test it
• Your success, iterate, and failure criteria
• What to do next, no matter how the data comes back
• How to bounce back if you counter a failure

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to start testing!

What's Next

From here on out, you will be running Offer Testing experiments, optimizing your offer until you meet your success criteria...or fail trying.

The last exercise in Offer Testing will show you when you're done Offer Testing. There you will learn how to continuing iterating your offer, and how to know when you are ready to move on to Currency Testing.