ABERDEEN, S.D. — Most events celebrate big wins. FAIL Fest celebrates the moments we tripped, wiped out or completely missed the mark—and learned something brilliant because of it. 

Back for another year of laughter, honesty and moments that didn’t go as planned, this year’s FAIL Fest featured a panel of entrepreneurs who weren’t afraid to dig into the tough questions.

Julie Fischbach, owner of the Finery Marketplace and Finery on Main Event Venue, spent years finding her path, from corporate work to business owner and small business coach, each twist has taught her something.

“I bounce back quickly because you have to. You’ve got to bound back really, really quickly,” she said. “I look at it as a learning experience. Honestly, there’s really no such thing as failure because you wouldn’t have known if you wouldn’t have tried it. And you need to try it. You need to take that risk so you know if it’s going to be a reward or a lesson.”

Joining Fischbach on the panel, Taylor Sumption discussed how things like the price of oats in Canada caused him to pivot into new experiences.

Sumption, chief executive officer of Maple Valley Foods and co-founder of Anthem Oats, advised those in the crowd to really look into who they do business with. 

“There's nothing more unstoppable than a group of people working well together and pulling in the same direction,” he said. 

“And there is literally nothing more destructive to your mental health, physical health, everything than a group of people not working well together.”

Sumption pointed to issue he and his wife faced while building up Anthem Oats. The company grew quickly, but the working environment wasn’t positive for the couple. They changed that path, cutting down on the number of stores they distributed to causing sales to drop by 70 or 80 percent. But it allowed them to love the work again.

“There's just a lesson in everything,” he said. “There's one thing, or a couple of things I could point to that are failures in my life like letting little problems fester. They need to be addressed. They can grow into really big problems quickly. …Something I learned over the years is letting those little things take away can really, really hurt you.”

Ryan Rivett, president and chief executive officer of My Place Hotels of America, echoed that point, saying there have been situations where he has let failure characterize how he responded to other things. That, he said, is a bigger failure.

“I can’t say we've had a lot of big failures and I'm thankful for that, but I also can say that we have a lot of small failures every day,” he said. “One of the biggest failures that I've had personally along the way is letting small failures lash themselves onto what I do tomorrow.

“Look at a failure not as something that is momentous or important, but something that is a stepping stone along the way,” he said. “Use these opportunities to understand what you want to do or how you want to go about it.”

FAIL Fest has become an annual event to remind us to celebrate progress, perseverance and the power of trying again, said Bea Smith, director of the Northern Innovation and Startup Center.

“When we talk openly about the ideas that didn’t go as planned, we create space for the breakthroughs that can,” she said. “You never know what success might be hiding inside a misstep.

“If we rallied around our failures instead of beating ourselves up over them, imagine how much faster we could build momentum. That’s what this event is all about—owning our stumbles, learning from them and using them as fuel to move forward.”

For more information, contact the Northern Innovation and Startup Center at startup@northern.edu.