Coming Soon
Failing to Fail
Everyone fails. Almost nobody knows what to do with it.
STOP PAYING FOR THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE
Why This Book Exists
Fear of failure doesn't care what industry you're in. I learned that the hard way, in a business I built and nearly lost, forged over 30+ years in the trades. But the lesson was never really about pipes and job sites, it's about what happens after you fail and nobody ever showed you what to do next.
This book is for any business owner who's ever wondered if it was all a mistake. The agency owner drowning in growth she can't systemize. The restaurant owner replaying the same staffing mistake for the third time and calling it 'bad luck.' The contractor who built something real and nearly lost it anyway. The startup founder mistaking repetition for learning. The manager who freezes the second something goes wrong, because nobody ever taught them what to do with a failure except bury it. Whatever the industry, the weight is the same.
If you've ever felt the weight of a mistake and didn't know what to do with it, this was written for you. Here's what should scare you more than reading it: not reading it. Every setback you're carrying right now is data you haven't used yet. The business owners who figure this out first don't just recover faster. They build something the ones who never figure it out can't catch up to.
Unprocessed Lessons
Every Business Owner Carries a Backpack
The setback you're still carrying alone. Most business owners never talk about their worst calls, the ones that still show up at 2 a.m. Failing to Fail is a field manual for turning that weight into something usable, one processed failure at a time.
But every failure is a brick, and bricks aren't meant to be carried forever. They're meant to be built with. This is a field manual for cracking open your failures and building protocols so you never pay for the same lesson twice.
The Image at the Heart of the Book. Every business owner carries this backpack, full of setbacks nobody taught them how to use. Failing to Fail is about learning to unpack it, one brick at a time.
The Methodology
A System, Not a Pep Talk
01 /REWIRE
02 /EXTRACT
03 /VALIDATE
Strip the emotion, state the facts.
Pull the real lessons out of what happened.
Get an outside perspective, find your blind spots.
04 /ENCODE
05 /EXECUTE
Build your P.O.G., a simple if/then protocol.
Deploy it, track it, never repeat the lesson.
The Companion Workbook
The book teaches the system. The Workbook is where you run it, alone or with your team or book club.
• A worksheet for every action step
• Five ready-to-use templates
• A 15-week team program and an eight-session book club guide
• A three-page Quick Start Card to hand out
About Tim Sjobeck
I learned this after years on the Alaska North Slope, then building a plumbing business in Sacramento, and in two heart surgeries that forced me to ask what the hard work was actually for. Climbing Half Dome in Yosemite wasn't just a hike for me. It was the moment those lessons finally clicked into place.
Ready to Set the Backpack Down?
Every setback you're carrying is data you haven't used yet. Failing to Fail gives you a five-step system to turn it into something you can use: a named failure, the lesson behind it, and a written protocol. Sixteen chapters, and every one ends with an action step.
We're also building the BUILD Protocol App where the system from this book becomes something you run every day, on every job.
Book Signing Events
Public appearances and book signing events for Failing to Fail.
Date | City | Venue
No events currently scheduled. Join the list to be the first to know when one's announced.
Navigation
© 2026 Advancing the Trades. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy & Terms of Service | Site Map
