Opportunity

One day years ago, literary agent, Mike and I made what I thought was a superb proposal to an editor, but it was ejected on the spot. Walking back to the hotel, I was discouraged but not Mike.

'This is when selling gets fun', he said. 'We'll go back and appeal to their needs. Then, they will beg to buy from us. All we have to do is to figure out the right approach!'.

What I regarded as failure, Mike saw it as a temporary setback. He seems charged by the challenge. Eventually, we thought of a new approach and it was successful. We even negotiated a contract with the very publisher who has turned us away.

'Leaders don't think about failure. They don't even use that word, relying instead on synonyms as mistake, glitch, false start, mess and error. But never 'failure'.