Sharing Your Failures in Business

Sharing your failures is the subject of this video for entrepreneurs, small businesses and professionals who value trust over trends. I share a personal story from my early days as a drummer that shaped my path and my view on this.

This video first went up on YouTube on May 15, 2025. The written post was added on November 9, 2026.

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Table of Contents

What Can Sharing Your Failures Do for You?

Sharing your failures can show a humility that connects you with clients, partners and projects who see that you were not always pitch perfect. Being transparent about what went wrong, and how you learned to make it right, may carry more authority than a fake front, in Loren Weisman’s view.

Hiding failures can feed a fake front of always being the top voice in a field.
A first professional recording session that went wrong can still lead to more work.
Offering to leave tuned, mic’d drums for a replacement may show professionalism even in a failure.
Failures can teach more than smooth successes, since they ask what went wrong and how to keep it from happening again.
Being proud of accomplishments while transparent about failures can help you stand out.

Sharing Your Failures: The Full Transcription

Being Open About Your Failures

There is a humility in being honest about your failures, in not trying to hide them or make yourself out to be the greatest thing ever, but to be as transparent and open about the things that went wrong along the way that brought you to the place where you know how to make things right. My name is Loren Weisman.

I’m a brand communications and optics strategist. And before I was doing this, I was in the music and entertainment industries. The beginning of my career was as a drummer. I was a session drummer and a ghost drummer.

I would come in, clean up a part, fix a part. If somebody was fired, if somebody was being moved out, if somebody was having issues, I came in. But it took me a while to get to that place.

My First Professional Recording Session

I still remember my first professional recording session, and it went terrible. And it’s nothing that I hide. I shared about it in two of my books, and I’m sharing about it here today. In the first session, I came in.

I came in and there were a series of. It was a larger room set up the drums. A series of people already giving me the eye like I shouldn’t be there. In the end, they were right.

I wasn’t ready for that session. The charts started playing. It was a tv. It was a TV date.

So we were lining up some stuff against a TV show. And this one action scene. We hit it by the skin at my chinny chin chin. The second one I nailed, the third one, couldn’t get it started.

Fired Mid Session

Just track after track, take after take. It wasn’t coming. I was doing everything that I could. I wanted to cry.

I was seeing these guys making fun of me. I could hear the talk back from people in the engine, whether they thought the mic was off or not going, we need somebody else. I was fired mid session.

Leaving My Drums for the Replacement

My saving face for that given session. What ended up getting me a whole bunch of other sessions was I came to the producer that had hired me and I said, look, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to hit this.

Do you want to bring someone in and save yourself the time? I’ll leave my drums. They were tuned up. A drum tech had tuned them up beautifully, better than I had ever tuned them.

They were all mic’d up, ready to go. So they were able to call in someone to replace me. I sat in the hall, just. I waited till everybody was tracking.

I was in tears. I was just wrecked. It was my first big opportunity and I blew it. This guy nailed out the track.

What the Replacing Drummer Said

The musicians all walked by. I mean, they wouldn’t even shake my hand. The Replacing drummer was really nice. He said, look, man, that was big.

You know, most people in this kind of situation, they’d be grabbing their drums, heading for the hills. You left yours. You let me use them. They were great.

They were easy. We got this done faster. Thank you. I unpacked my drums really quietly, took off, and I got a phone call.

Meeting the Producer

And then it was, hey, do you want to meet at a place called D’Angelo’s? For those up in Massachusetts, they might remember it, a little sub shop. Sat down with the producer, and I was just.

I didn’t know what was gonna. I didn’t know what was gonna happen. I didn’t know why there was even a conversation. He was very clear, though.

He’s like, I want to meet you. So I sat down and met with him, and he said, you weren’t ready. It was kind of part of me, like, tell me something I don’t know.

You Weren’t Ready, but You Held Your Own

You weren’t ready, but you held your own. You show professionalism. You showed respect for the session. You show respect for the other producers.

You showed respect for the project as a whole. I want to work with you again just based on that. I want to understand a little bit more about your reading, what you can handle, what you can’t handle, and I’m sure that’ll grow, but I can’t have this happen again.

However, your kind of professionalism outside of that particular take, we could have that happen a lot. From there, I was able to work with him a number of times, and my ability grew and my studio chops grew, and my understanding of not even that.

Eyes on the Chart, and Becoming Better

It wasn’t that I couldn’t play the part, but the strain, the stress, some of the anxiety in the early days, how to remove that, how to get focused, how to align. Okay, it doesn’t matter if all eyes are on you.

My responsibility and my job was eyes on the chart, eyes on the project, eyes on what the producer and the engineer wanted. Point being, it was humiliating. It was intense. I cried a few times that day.

Yet it also instilled me to want to be better. It helped me to become better. And that drummer that replaced me brought me into a world where I ended up doing a fair amount of replacing of other drummers.

And it brought me to a world to understand that professionalism was so key in a time where everyone’s showing off and I can do this and I can do that, but the people that show up on time, the people that can bend and be patient and be persevering, even in the hardest situations. So in the end that helped me.

Sharing These Elements in Business

There are a lot of people that wouldn’t share about those kind of things. And maybe an example would happen for you inside a business. But to share these elements, sometimes it may connect you with other individuals, with other clients, with other partners, with other.

With other projects. When they understand, hey, you’re human. Hey, you weren’t always this pitch perfect. So many out there are trying to present this fake front that they were always just this top voice in their field, that they were always an influencer, that they were always this, when in most cases it’s not true.

So stand out from that crowd, be that person that is as proud in their accomplishments, still being humble, yet can also be humble and transparent in their failures.

Learning From the Failures

In a lot of ways, I feel like it was more of the failures that helped me learn to do what I did better in music, in tv, and even inside of communications than it was in the super successes, because inside of the failures, it was what went wrong. How do we make it not happen again?

What do I have to learn from this? What, how do I dissect this? How do I strategically look at this? How do I improve on this?

Humility and Authority

Then certain situations where it just went off without a hitch and thinking, okay, everything’s great. In your humility, you may be able to connect and engage with that much more authority than trying to make yourself out to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Be honest, be true, be you, be transparent, and be prepared to share some of these things that may not be your proudest moments, but could amplify the sense of who you are and who you may be able to be for someone else down the line.

Telling the Whole Story in My Talks

Watching out for the 75 to 25 hype stories from people that are not lying, but leaving out a lot of the truth.

Questions and Answers

Is it a good idea to share your failures in business?

Sharing failures in business can be a good idea when it shows you are human and not always pitch perfect. It may connect you with other individuals, clients and partners who value that transparency, as Loren Weisman sees it.

How can failure help you improve professionally?

Failure can push you to ask what went wrong, how to dissect it and how to improve on it. Learning to remove stress and anxiety and keep your eyes on the work may grow your ability over time.

How do you handle being fired or failing in front of others?

Being fired in front of others can be met with professionalism and respect for the project, such as offering to help the replacement get the work done. That respect may open doors even after the failure itself.

Why can admitting failure show strength instead of weakness?

Admitting failure can show strength when it is paired with humility and transparency. It may engage people with more authority than trying to look like the greatest thing since sliced bread.

What does humility look like in personal branding?

Humility in personal branding can look like being proud of accomplishments while still being open about failures. Sharing moments that may not be your proudest can amplify a sense of who you are.

Sharing Your Failures and My First Recording Session