Being stranded in a dark mountain village on a Greek island taught me this about storytelling: failure stories are more memorable than perfect success.
A couple of years back, I went on holiday to Crete with a friend.
We rented bikes, looked at the map and decided to go to the next bigger town.
The problem? We totally miscalculated how long it takes by bike when the terrain is not flat. Because if you ever have been to Crete you will know how hilly it is, with mountains up to over 2400m.
So everything took us a lot longer than expected and we ended up in the middle of nowhere when night came.
From one minute to the next, it got almost pitch black around 7pm. We were not prepared for this: no lights on the bikes – and very bad brakes.
We had to admit that we had done something really stupid and needed help.
So my friend stopped the next car that came by, it was a truck.
And after our initial shock, when the driver first stored his rifle on the truck – he was the nicest person ever.
He took us home to his mom, who gave us coffee. Then he organized friends to take us to the hotel – including our bikes in the trunk of the car.
In hindsight, this adventure could have gone really bad – all due to some wrong and naive decisions.
And you know what? Whenever I think about this holiday, this adventure comes to my mind – everything else is a blur.
So why is that the moment that stuck?
Why does a failure leave a stronger mark?
We did a lot of other stuff on Crete and on multiple other holidays, but this bike trip that went wrong is the first that I remember. Let’s figure out why.
Failure stories trigger emotions. Negative emotions have a very strong ‘call to action’ – they are feelings we want to escape from! If you add a turnaround and a big final success to it, it is like offering the escape plan.
Combine failures with struggles, searching and a final success, you have the story arc of most successful novels – and many sales pages:
- big problem, facing some dreadful consequences
- struggles, searching for a solution
- turnaround, success
That is why this story arc is the underlying structure of most storytelling frameworks:
Failures have the power to turn a generic piece of content into unique stories.
- they take unexpected turns
- they are unique – success is one story, failures can take endless forms
- they trigger strong emotions (who wants get stranded in a dark mountain village and the only person who might help has a gun)
Between all perfect sunny days of a summer holiday, this (almost) fatal event of being stranded in a dark mountain village works like a dark cloud on a perfectly blue sky.
Not because it was perfect but because it went wrong, took an unexpected turn, brought us some really nice and helpful people, and now is a great story to tell.
Success often is ONE state that is very much alike for everyone.
Our failures are unique.
How you frame the failure matters
There is a trap most people fall into: If YOU see your failure in a negative way, your audience will too!
I botched my mom’s birthday cake. What happened next taught me a powerful lesson about storytelling.
It was a big family celebration in the mountains. I made a traditional German sugar cake: yeast dough, butter, almonds, sugar.
Only… I got it totally wrong. The cake turned out rock hard.
I felt like I had failed. I was ready to apologize to everyone for the cake.
But my aunt jumped in and said: “This is a Moroccan specialty Susanna made just for today, everyone has to try it!”
Suddenly, everyone loved the cake. Minutes later, it was gone.
She came over laughing: “You should burn another one.”
All she did was change the narrative and it changed everything. Same cake, different story, different result.
It’s the same in content creation and business.
Your content, your offer, your product, your work: It’s not just what you create. It’s how you frame it.
The right story turns failure into fascination. A flop into a feature.
Confidence in your message can be the difference between “meh” and “sold out.”
So next time something doesn’t go perfectly, ask yourself:
Can I reframe this?
Because sometimes, all it takes is a few words to turn a brick into a best-seller.
So how do you actually apply this in your own content?
There are different ways to treat failures in your stories:
Tell failure stories from a point of self confidence
Talking about failures from a point of confidence sounds totally different than when you apologize for something that may not be that bad. Had I actually apologized for the failed cake, people would have viewed the cake with different eyes, expecting something broken or wrong. My aunts confidence to present it as something good changed the situation completely.
Present a lesson learned
Narrating an outcome in a ‘this is what happened and what I learned from it’ instead of ‘I am so sorry that I made a mistake’ can completely change how your audience perceives it.
In the cake example, if I want to be perceived as a good cook or baker, I could still build on the failure as an experience that can help my audience to avoid getting in the same situation. Knowing what can go wrong can be a lot more valuable than never having any trouble.
This is one reason why self-confident people don’t seem to ever have to face failures. Because the reframe them into something else: lessons learned or experiences.
Reframe it as something positive
Is it really a failure, or is a feature? I have seen startups pivot from their original product plan to booming success with something they never planned on releasing.
As in the story about my cake failure, sometimes the result is not bad just not as planned or expected. That does not need to be framed as a failure. Simply look at the result and decide how you can present it in a more positive way.
The key is to take a step back from your expectation and focus on the good of the outcome.
The cake tasted the same as a failed sugar cake as it did framed as a moroccan specialty. But people loved the specialty more than they would have the failed cake.
Use it as a good anecdote, make content personal
Sometimes a failure is simply a failure.
As in the bike story above: Yes, we made that mistake. And no, we did not conjure light from some mysterious source. We depended on the friendliness of strangers – and found it.
But it is a good anecdote, it is a memorable story. It was the number one story we told when we got back from the holiday – and we have recently retold it to my friend’s daughter as a crazy adventure from her moms past.
This becomes even more powerful in a professional context.
Professional failure stories build credibility
Some failures are not really failures. They are unexpected outcomes of experiments.
Remember? I am a mathematician and I worked some years as a scientific researcher.
In science, it is a very common scenario that when you set up an experiment you already have made up your mind how the outcome is going to be. The experiment is done to statistically ‘proof’ your assumption. But sometimes the results don’t prove what you thought they would. And that is not failure of the experiment. It still is a result that you can interpret and learn from it.
This happened in my Introduction experiment.
In the experiment, I looked at the introductions to some of my blog posts and thought I could do better. To examine if my new blog post introductions really performed better, I compared some analytics data for the before and after.
I expected the time people spend on my posts to increase with improved introductions. But that was not the case – or rather the data was inconclusive.
It felt like a failure of the experiment. But with a little more fairness to myself, it just is a result that I have to analyze. Experiments are often done to prove an assumption. But we need this proof because the reality can be a little different than what we think.
The experiment, the honesty about the outcome and the analysis of the results can still be great content, great stories – and serve to build trust in our ability to deal with situations that don’t go as hoped or planned.
Because the reality is rarely a straight line. Real expertise, knowledge show in how we react to unexpected turns.
At this point, you might be thinking: “That sounds great—but where do I even find these stories?”
Where can you find your failure stories
When I started to add stories to my content, I had a hard time finding them. I struggle with finding a connection with every day life experiences and content lessons – and maybe that is something you don’t want to do.
There are more ways to tell stories in your content, here are some ideas:
Anecdotes and Metaphors
That is what I mostly do. I find content lessons in things that happen(ed) in my life – like the above travel story and the cake story. They really happened and one day, I had the idea that there is a content lesson in it.
But I also have to admit that often actively looking for these examples that would work as a metaphor fails. It is more like having an open mind and then suddenly they flash into my brain and I think ‘this would be a good story to tell.’
Tell your journey one step at a time
I see a lot of this on Instagram. People buying a house and showing one post at a time how they fix it. And everybody who has ever done something significant, will know that this journey will include a ton of failures. Trying something that does not work as planned. Discovering something unexpected that was not included in the idea. Bad experiences with tool, contractors or material.
Experiment
I don’t think there is an area of business, or even hobbies where you cannot experiment. It is all a matter of how you set it up, how you document it, and how you tell your audience about it. I have done it with the the introduction experiment I mentioned above.
Every experiment can turn into multiple stories – and some of it will make awesome failure content.
How to use failure stories
No, we don’t want to talk about our failures and shortcomings all day long. We don’t want our content to sound like whining or self destruction.
Using failure stories in your content can be powerful. But it is easy to lose focus and tell too many stories without much lesson. Keep your stories short and crisp and never forget to lean more into what you actually want people to learn.
Share where this is meant to go early. If people wonder for too long why they are reading about biking on Crete when they came for a content lesson, you can lose them. I tried to avoid that by mentioning the connection between the story and a content lesson in the introduction of this post. Deep descriptions of settings and characters work beautifully in novels, but in educational content they can dilute your message.
Some failures are better kept private
There is a thin line between oversharing too many failures and connecting to your audience over shared negative experiences.
Keep in mind what your goal is with your stories. You want to use your failures to explain, to share a unique experience, to give a reason – and to connect.
You don’t want to play with pity.
While some very human failures serve as a connector, making yourself look stupid, clumsy or careless may not help very much to build trust and recognition.
Also while some glimpses at your private life make you unique and human, sharing too personal things may backfire.
Overall, you need to feel comfortable with how much you share – and self confidence usually helps to find that thin line between authentic storytelling and too much information.
One last thing before you go: Notice what just happened? I used three completely different stories – travel disaster, family birthday, business experiment – to teach the same lesson. This is what I mean when I say stories live in your everyday life.
You don’t need perfect – you need real. Your failures, properly framed, build more connection than your successes ever will.
And if you want to take this further — my free Human Template shows you how to bring your whole personality into your content, not just your failure stories. Because that’s where the real connection happens:
