The hard parts make us better - failure, rejection, closed doors, and red lights

Hello from Kellow Construction,

This week I listened to a podcast. In it the woman being interviewed shared that she asks her tween aged children each evening at dinner to share a way in which they failed that day. Then the failure is spotlit, and as a family they workshop what the child learned from it, and what they all can learn from it. They talk about the bravery in it, and the potential that came from it. She is teaching her children that failure is an essential component to success, and should not be feared, shamed, or poked. It should be recognized as a natural part of learning, growth and moving forward and beyond.

Failure is essential to success in all parts of life.

The giants I look up to, my mentors, my inspirations, are all people who had the courage to fail. People (mostly women) who said "Hey I can do that!" They took a chance and figured it out, while the whole world watched. They failed their way to the top, no fear. Well, maybe some fear, but went ahead anyways.

I see our culture as a culture of perfectionism. Obsessed with how things appear, social media toxicity, and on and on. Failure on the surface, seems like something to run from, to hide from others, and to keep in a dark place to ourselves. Failure = weak, wrong, stupid, imperfect.

I totally disagree with this.

I loved listening to this woman talk about celebrating failures and rejections. It brightened me up. It's a very Brene Brown cliche, but come on, she is great. Brene Brown is a national treasure as far as I'm concerned.

As a company in a very competitive industry, we deal with rejection and failures. Just like all businesses do. Sometimes, we don't get jobs that we put weeks into preparing numbers for. Sometimes, a competing builder comes in with much lower numbers. We know how so many of those builders work. They will make all their money on change orders, give terrible service, cost them more money in the long term. But the clients see that low number, and they ... just ... can't ... resist ...

We get rejected for a variety of other reasons, here and there. It is a part of the deal. The other side of that coin is us rejecting others. Sometimes things don't work out with a subcontractor, a potential hire etc. Rejection and confrontation is unavoidable it seems. It can feel excruciating in the moment. But we just keep going. We learn, we improve, our blade gets sharpened. We are prepared and better equipped the next time around.

We are truly amazed at how much success we have gained, through the failures. We never could have dreamed up this type of growth. What a fun surprise. Thank you so much for your continued referrals and support. Keep us in mind for any projects we would love to help you and your people!