Persistence
How many attempts until it works?
There's no magic number. Count what each attempt taught you, not how many failed. Stop when you repeat the same mistake; keep going while you're learning.
bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published
Everyone who has fallen a few times asks this question: how many more attempts, three, five, ten? It would be nice to have a number, but there isn't one. There is, however, a better way of counting, and it changes the answer.
What to do now
- Count lessons, not falls. Instead of "I failed five times," write down what each attempt taught you. If the list is growing, you're moving forward, even without results yet.
- Watch whether the mistake repeats. Trying again with what you learned is persistence. Repeating the same mistake under another name is stubbornness. If the same problem knocked you down three times, it needs solving before the fourth.
- Set limits before you start. How much time and money are you willing to put into this attempt? What minimum result do you need to see, and by when? A limit agreed in advance prevents decisions made in desperation.
- Make each attempt shorter. Smaller, faster attempts cost less and teach more. Test ideas before betting everything on them.
- Protect the essentials between attempts. Housing, food, health and other people's money stay out of the bet. That way, a fall doesn't become a disaster.
- Ask for an outside view. A mentor, Sebrae, someone in the industry. Sometimes the answer to "do I keep going or stop?" is "keep going, but change this."
- Respect fatigue. A pause isn't giving up. If discouragement has turned into hopelessness, seek support: CVV at 188; primary health units (UBS) and psychosocial care centers (CAPS) through SUS.
- Write down what changed since the last attempt. If nothing changed in the method, the partners or the audience, the next attempt is likely to repeat the result. Change at least one important thing.
When it happened to Bairo
Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez can't say how many times he tried. He says he tried, thought about stopping and almost gave up more times than he can count. The number he chose to tell the story is seven: the seventh attempt was the one that worked.
Looking back, he sees what each one left. The hair-treatment course left method. The artificial intelligence idea that came too early left an eye for the future. The cosmetics brand left proof that he could create from nothing. The partners who pushed him out left the lesson about whom to build with. Going broke with many people depending on him left the courage to do what he didn't know how to do. The coin that formed a community, he says, left the road as his address.
The path
In Bairo's life, seven isn't a magic number: it's the name he gave to the attempt that brought together what the earlier ones taught. It didn't work by luck; it was the first that carried all the others inside it. Perhaps the right question isn't "how many times should I try," but "what will this attempt teach me for the next one."
Celebrate the attempts, not only the successes. Every time you try again, you're exercising one of the rarest qualities there is: the ability to get up. Record it. A few years from now, looking back, you may find that the attempts that didn't work were precisely the ones that prepared the one that did.