Wedding Business Solutions

If there's no risk of failure, there's no opportunity for growth

• Alan Berg, CSP, FPSA, Global Speaking Fellow

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Are you playing it too safe in your business, avoiding the chance to learn and stretch beyond your comfort zone? What could you accomplish if you focused less on the fear of failure, and more on the opportunities that come from simply trying something new—even if it doesn’t go as planned? In this episode, I share insights on reframing failure, recognizing unexpected wins, and taking control of how you respond when things don’t turn out the way you hoped.

Listen to this new 6-minute episode for motivation to embrace the risk of failure as your stepping stone to growth and progress.

If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  

View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/


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I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks. 

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site: 

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com 

If there's no risk of failure, where's the opportunity for growth? Listen to this episode. See where I'm going with this. Hey, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. If there's no risk of failure, I'm actually re recording a few videos today because I did not switch over to the correct microphone and I recorded a lot of video without sound. There is an opportunity for failure. Now, I could not have failed had I not tried in the first place. And I'm just happy that I caught it before I made even more videos.

But think about this. In life, failure just means you tried something and didn't get the result you want. You've probably heard me speak about this before. You've probably heard other people talk about this. People always like to bring up how Thomas Edison tried 10,000 different filaments to try to make the light bulb burn longer without burning out. And when somebody said he had failed, he said, no, he just succeeded in finding 10,000 things that don't work for that. It's just a different attitude, right? Muhammad Ali said, it's not how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back up again. And it's the same thing with us in life.

We have to try new things, and that's how we grow. We have to be okay with it not succeeding the first time. You've probably heard me talking about how I'm learning French with Duolingo. I think as of this, it's day 1928 or something like that. And my favorite days are the days when it's kicking my butt because it means I don't know it. And if I don't know it, it means I have something to learn. And when I get past that and now I know it now, that's a feeling of accomplishment. That's what it is, right? If everything is easy, if I just get perfect lesson, perfect lesson, perfect lesson, you know, that's nice.

And some days maybe that's okay, but the reality is it's not okay because I didn't learn anything. I'm where I was. And we don't even realize how much we've learned in our lives. That's why I remember reading in a book talking how it's good to take time to just look over your shoulder and realize what you've succeeded in so far. We can focus on the failure. We can focus on the things we can't do, or we can try to find another way to do it, we can try it again a different way. And then sometimes, and this has happened to me, it's probably happened to you, that you try something, it doesn't work, but you get a different result.

And that different result is actually pretty good. I know I have this with ChatGPT. I have a GPT with 21 different prompts that I run on my clients' reviews, their website, their social media and things. And it started at seven. And then one day ChatGPT went rogue. And remember, they do hallucinate and they do make mistakes. And it gave me all these questions and answers, but they weren't the ones that I asked. And I was ready to delete it and I stopped and I read and thought, actually that was pretty good. So I added more and then I added more and added more and eventually I had 22 last year. And then I tweaked them a little bit for this year to 21. But it really was because I was ready to throw out the thing that wasn't what I had asked for and then found that it was actually pretty good.

Now, I've thrown out plenty of other stuff that AI has given me that wasn't what I wanted, that wasn't any good, and we always have to be careful with that. But just because it wasn't the result you want doesn't mean it couldn't be a good result. I mean, how many recipes have come that way of somebody just trying something or, you know, you didn't have the thing that you needed and then you used something else because you had it on hand and you taste it and you're like, oh, that's even better this way. I like that.

So that's the whole key here, is if you focus on the failure, you're going to probably get failure. If you focus on the success, if you focus on the process of trying, that's the real success, is that you tried something different. And then if it doesn't work out, what did you learn? What can you do differently? What can you change? I was just doing the audiobook for AI for the Real World, my new AI book. And there was something, one of the chapters in there talks about how if you're not getting the result you want, the place to look is in the mirror. Look at yourself and say you're in control. What can you do differently that you might get a different result? Instead of blaming the AI tool or blaming other people or the weather or whatever, what can you do different? Because that's the only thing you really have control over is you, what you do, what you say, the actions that you take.

So the same thing over here, you know, failure. If there's no risk of failure, have you really stretched yourself? Have you really tried to push yourself outside of your comfort zone? And that's where the good stuff lives.

You know, I'm on my streak on Duolingo, partly because of that little green owl that comes up every morning and reminds me that I'm on my streak, and I don't want to lose my streak. But it's also because my goal is not to get to the end of the lesson. As a matter of fact, very often it offers me to jump ahead if I'm doing well in a particular lesson. And I always say no. And the reason I say no is that my goal isn't to finish the lessons. My goal is to achieve a level of fluency like I did in Spanish. That's my goal.

And every time I'm out and I'm able to speak to someone in Spanish, that goal has been achieved to a certain level where I'm now doing what I wanted to do, which is in the real world, using this particular skill.

So what are you doing that has a risk of failure? And it's okay to say, what is the worst that can happen? I've done a whole episode about this. I'll probably do more about this in the future. It's okay to look at what's the worst that could happen. And usually what the worst could happen is it's not that bad. And if it's not that bad, then what are you really risking? You know, for me and my business, if the worst that can happen is it took me some time and money, right, I can get money back, but I can't get more time back. But if that's all that it cost me, it was worth trying. In most cases, it was worth trying.

If the potential reward is there, and if it doesn't work, it cost me some money and time, okay, I can try something else. But how many things have I done in my business and you've done in your business that cost you money and time? And it worked out because you did succeed, and maybe you didn't get the result you wanted, but you got a good one.

So same thing here. If there's no risk of failure, where's the opportunity for growth? Thanks for listening.

I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2026 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


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Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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