Failure Coach XLI

Epic Failure is Everywhere 

One Year after that Missouri Athletic Club West presentation Alan was feeling fortunate at how far he had come. Alan Edgewater, business coach and bestselling author of business books. Now available in collector edition three book set. Three paperback books packaged together in a special edition book sleeve. Purchase includes limited edition Abraham Lincoln #epicfailure poster, three limited edition paperback volumes not available anywhere else. A great gift for the holiday season. 

It isn’t easy being anybody, but no one is better at being you.

You can’t give 110%

Negative Space

As this project gets closer to fruition, Alan gets more and more excited about marketing his career. This special edition set was his idea and he personally pre-sold the concept to the world’s number one retailer. Here he was looking over the promotional materials and a mock-up of the product. They were planning on a retail price of $24.00 and expected to sell 100,000 units in 3 months. This release alone keeps him on the radar as a prospect for keynote speaker gigs and will surely help him build his brand going forward.                                 

Failure Fans everywhere understand the reality of our cultural bias and focus on winning. Alan is careful to collect supporting materials from popular culture, books, magazines, television and the internet.

The New York Times recently quoted actor Steve Coogan as he talked of his role in the Academy Award nominated film Philomena, for which he helped write the screenplay. In the movie, a young woman who approaches Steve Coogan’s character about writing a human interest story about her mother, Philomena (played by Judi Dench). Philomena has searched for decades for a child taken from her and given up for adoption by Irish nuns 40 years ago. He agrees to write the story. So begins a softly comic tale of Philomena’s sad and touching road trip undertaken by this pair of almost complete opposites: From Ireland to America and back again. A Catholic, Philomena has lived her life believing that the nuns who forced her to give up her son were executing a fit punishment for the sin she committed by having a child out of wedlock. They track down her son, only to find that he died a decade before. Philomena is devastated. 

The actor Coogan says “Americans are about success, the American Dream and all that,” adding “the British get more pleasure from seeing other people fail than ourselves succeed. We like people who keep trying, even though they’re losing. That’s the character I play in Philomena.” Says Coogan. Alan Edgewater sees Coogan’s interview as another reinforcement for his failure followers. He likes the international point-counterpoint and considers adding it to his keynote address materials.

At the Sculpture City conference across town in the Saint Louis Central West End neighborhood at the Chase Park Plaza, Canadian-Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer speaks to a group of artists, students and academics. “My work lives at the intersection of architecture and performance art,” he says adding: “It is just like a club: you set things up and hope people will come in and make it a scene. If they don’t, it’s okay. You move on and do something else.”

Elon Musk, African-born Canadian-American business magnate, investor and inventor who is currently the CEO of SpaceX and also Tesla Motors strikes Alan Edgewater as another fine example for failure fans. Both companies are dramatic illustrations of failing first thinks Alan.

The local bookseller, Left Bank Books with a corner location in the heart of the Central West End is selling all three of Alan Edgewater’s Books with a prominent window display that includes the Abraham Lincoln #failurefirst Push Pin Studios style poster. On display, adjacent to It isn’t easy being anybody, You can’t give 110% and Negative Space are two other recent book releases: The Rise, The Gift of Failure and the Search for Mastery by Sarah Lewis and The Up Side of Down, Why Failing well is the Key to Success by Megan McArdle.

Alan Edgewater feels he is riding a wave but continues to fiddle with his body of work ostensibly preparing for the next show. He knows the power of storytelling. He also knows that he is only as good as his last movie (or book, or keynote, or seminar). Still, he knows he must forge ahead to stay ahead of the curve.