Failures are necessary.

A mistake = failure.
And failure = A sign to give up.

If this is the mentality within your team, good luck with ever achieving meaningful growth in your craft.

In my career, I’ve been lucky enough to work alongside patient managers and colleagues who saw mistakes and missteps as opportunities to learn and grow.

Some of my most important learnings in influencer marketing have come in retrospect, after seeing firsthand what not to do.

Case in point, I only realised the importance of avoiding seasonal custom influencer assets after a six-figure collaboration nearly fell through due to the influencer wanting to rework and delay the video.

Another early lesson? Always cap CPM-based deals.
I once negotiated a deal based on $20 CPM without a maximum cap, assuming the video would perform in line with the creator’s usual range (with a maximum of 750K views at 30 days).
The video hit 2 million views.
That $15K deal quickly became a $40K invoice.

Safe to say, I never left out a cap again.

But it’s largely because I made those mistakes that the learnings stuck with me.

And it’s not like those experiences stopped me from testing new formats again. In fact, I now know how to leverage them better and mitigate the risks.

Today, my approach to influencer marketing is grounded in a framework that’s built on testing and learning fast.

The first thing I tell most people when they start out?

👉 Your first campaign will probably be unprofitable.
👉 Your second might be too.

But those “failures” are necessary.

They help you understand what went wrong and how to build your own formula for success.

I’ve found the same applies to most things in life.