You've fallen 99 times? You're hired!

Originally published on Linkedin on January 25, 2015 By Brandon Marshall.

Who would you prefer to hire?
Someone who has tried something 100 times and never failed or someone who’s tried 100 different things, failed 99 times, and only succeeded once.
Here’s why you should hire the person who’s fallen short 99 times.
If you’ve succeeded 100 times without fail, you haven’t been risking anything. You’ve been playing it safe. And you’ve never been tried or challenged. Heck, you haven’t even broken a sweat. And you’ve never learned anything new because you’ve never had to. You may be successful … but you’re also static.
Now someone who’s fallen 99 times has also had to get up 99 times, which shows character, determination and a strong will. If you’ve fallen 99 times out of a hundred, you’ve risked something all 100 times, which is daring. Falling 99 times also provides 99 opportunities to learn something new that can be used for the next challenge. If you’ve fallen 99 times, you weren’t born into success – you had to earn it.
To do good things, you need someone with a consistent track record. To do great things, you need someone who’s not afraid to take risks and will get right back up after falling down. You can pack your team with perfect people all you want, but I want to do something that hasn’t been done before. I want to shake things up. I need people who think, “I don’t know how many tries it’s going to take but I’m going to do this eventually.”