It’s part of an entrepreneur’s make up to take risks. Launching a new product, entering a new market, or starting a business entails an element of risk that can lead to failure just as it can lead to success.
As Benjamin Franklin once said: “The man who does things makes many mistakes, but he never makes the biggest mistake of all – doing nothing.”
Many of the world’s wealthiest people have failed in business, some more than once. What sets them apart from other “failures” is their ability to learn from their experiences and put failure behind them. We should never be afraid to fail; only to fail to learn from our failures.
Failure can be a great teacher — it teaches us what not to do. Our lives are filled with goal-setting and working to achieve those goals, and when we do something that doesn’ t get us where we want to be we can choose to either give up or to try something else. And at that point we already know one approach that won’ t work.
Once we begin to look for other means of achieving our goals we open up our minds and have to apply our intellects to alternative courses of action that might earlier have been ignored. We learn to create a greater number of options and to be more critical in evaluating them.
With the right kind of personality — the entrepreneurial kind, failure is a motivator. Nobody likes to fail and it can make us even more determined to find success. Failure is never seen as the end result of a drive toward a goal; it’s only a setback.
This ability to fall and rise again builds character in a person. Just being able to get up and try again is a means of proving to ourselves that we’re bigger than whatever it was that caused us to fail. We’ll know more next time; we’ll be stronger and better-equipped to reach the goal.
It doesn’t mean that failure blinds us to the truth. We have to be realistic in our assessment of why we failed if we’re going to find any benefit in it. Our self-perception is sharpened as is our ability to analyze our weaknesses and compensate for them.
You’ve no doubt heard the expression “what does not destroy me makes me stronger” or words to that effect. Those are the words of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and they apply to entrepreneurs in the same way they do to champion athletes. The only way to success is to lay yourself on the line and try as hard as you can.
And just as in sport, failure builds the strength of the businessperson and makes them tougher for the next attempt. You gain a clearer vision of victory and define your goal in detail. You feel less pain when you’re exerting maximum effort.
Life isn’t easy and failure proves it; it also proves that hard work can be rewarded. Having an early or easy success can be misleading. Think of a child that has everything given to it. Does that prepare the child for adulthood? It does not! Experiencing failure is good preparation for life in the world of business and prepares us for dealing with reality and hard facts.
Don’t take failure personally. It’s an experience that tells you something didn’t work out and that you have to try something else next time. If failure is taken the right way you will have acquired valuable knowledge and made progress towards your goal of success. You will be wiser and stronger as a result.
Among many notable people who failed early in their lives and later went on to greatness are Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, and Helen Keller. They each had the option of giving up or learning from their experience and applying this knowledge to try again for success.
Sumner M. Redstone, Chairman and CEO of Viacom, one of the world’s largest entertainment and media companies, said this about how his early failures helped get him to where he is today: “Big success is not built on success. It’s built on adversity, failure and frustration, sometimes catastrophe, and the way we deal with it and turn it around.”
Copyright 2005, RAN ONE Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from www.ranone.com.
Chris’ combination of academic credentials, career experience and temperament ideally suit his calling as a business development advisor. Clients say he has a mind for business and a heart for service.