The first time I created something on the Internet was thirty years ago. It was RBG Online, according to what folks said, although I’m not sure, that was the first Black-owned internet service provider on the West Coast.

In ’95, the internet was a series of Mom & Pop shops, along with the big boys like America Online, Compuserve, Prodigy, and a few others. But we opened with a tiny office on Wilshire, filled it with a few hundred dial-up modems, and watched the magic when each would beep when some user, dialing with LONG-DISTANCE CHARGES, logged onto our site.

It was addictive.

Over the years, I’ve done a few experiments based on social media. Not all worked out; sometimes it was due to software issues (365ALLY), and other times, my plan just wasn’t good enough (The Yelp). But I learned something valuable each time.

TheMetaphorClub.com represents what I’ve learned. Something not working as it should? I know enough to not only fix it, but not panic while fixing it. Building the site? I know enough to be patient because communities take time to build. Figuring out how to make sure expenses don’t run amok? Built it into the business plan.

The point is that, as Kev on Stage says in his new book, you must embrace failure to succeed. I’ve had a gazillion books receive NOs, and that didn’t stop me. It kept teaching me. Your life is going to be a series of consistent failures until you succeed. The question is whether or not you’re gonna let the IDEA of failure stop you in the first place. Me? I wake up with a ‘no’ in my pocket. So what’s the risk of working toward a ‘yes’?

To quote Teddy Roosevelt, and what I used to say at the start of my Divine Nine lectures…

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Always have a vision that embraces failure as you eventually make your way to a yes and success.