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Entrepreneurial Failure - Get Used to it
by Adam McFarland
Published on this site: April 29th, 2006 - See
more articles from this month
To be a successful entrepreneur you are going to have to learn
to deal with failure. There is no way around it. Thomas Edison
tried over ten thousand different experiments before he finally
demonstrated the first incandescent light bulb on October
21, 1879. Bill Gates' first company, Traf-O-Data, was a failure.
Michael Jordan was once quoted as saying: "I've missed
more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games.
26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot;
And missed. I've failed over and over again in my life. And
that is
why I succeed."
In my short stint as an entrepreneur I've failed more times
than I can count. I have also had my share of success, but
it's not even close to equal. The failures far outweigh the
successes, and I'm sure I have a lot more failure ahead of
me. I'm ok with that because I know that as soon as I stop
failing, I have stopped trying to innovate. It's the nature
of the business of being an entrepreneur, and of success in
general.
If it were easy, everyone would do it. It is naive to think
that every good idea that you have will result in a successful
business venture. I have yet to hear an entrepreneur say "every
single idea I come up with seems to work." More likely,
you hear something like "I failed at my first five businesses
before this one took off."
Think about that for a second. Five businesses. Sometimes
the number is three, sometimes it's 20, but the important
point is that most entrepreneurs don't hit a home-run with
their first company. It really does amaze me - how many people
have the stones to fail five times and still start a sixth
business? You have to be supremely confident and treat those
previous five times as a learning experience for the sixth.
And if number six fails, you have to do the same and move
on to number seven.
In my opinion, the most important thing is how you deal with
failure. Once you accept that it's inevitable, you are able
to learn from your mistakes and move on. It's easy to let
the failure consume you - not so much because you are pessimistic,
but more so because it is hard to see something that you poured
your heart and soul into be ignored or rejected. As soon as
possible you need to come to the realization that your business
is what they are ignoring or rejecting, not you. The sooner
you do that, the sooner you can objectively analyze why you
failed and learn the things necessary for improvement in the
future.
Failure isn't easy and is extremely frustrating, but it's
a necessary part of success. Don't believe me? Ask Thomas
Edison, Bill Gates or Michael Jordan! Ok, asking Thomas Edison
might be a little tough, but you get the idea :)
Adam McFarland owns the http://SportsLizard.com
Network
( http://Network.SportsLizard.com
). You can read Adam's blog about being a young internet entrepreneur
by going to http://www.sportslizard.com/blog/
http://SportsLizard.com
was recently awarded honorable mention in the Mirosoft Start
Something Amazing Awards
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