BY Martin Zwilling
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FROM Young Entrepreneur
People who are afraid of failing shouldn't become entrepreneurs.
The reason? In a certain sense, entrepreneurship is all about pushing
your limits and taking risks. So a degree of failure should be expected
-- and, in my opinion, worn like a badge of honor. It would stand for
bravery -- or at least mark the psychological feat of overcoming your
fears.
It would also send the message that even though you've failed,
you've likely learned a valuable lesson. According to investors I know,
young entrepreneurs who have failed at least once are more likely to get
funding from them, compared to entrepreneurs with a perfect track
record. Investors know that founders often learn more from a failure
than they do from a success, so don’t be so quick to delete a failure
from your bio.
I'm not, however, suggesting that you fail on purpose. I'm also not
suggesting that amassing multiple failures is a good idea either. But if
it happens, a failure shouldn't be shunned. You should embrace it, grow
from it and use the experience to move to the next idea.
Here are three tips on how to turn failure into an advantage:
- Accept responsibility, don't spread the blame. It’s easy to blame partners, investors, customers and the economy. But if you blame someone else, you'll never learn from your mistakes. Remember, you volunteered to be an entrepreneur, not a victim.
- Capitalize on the good amid the bad. In every bad
deal, there are always some good people. Many entrepreneurs have taken
on one of these as a new partner, and gone on to make millions of
dollars. The good investors will fund you again, and the good customers
will gladly accept your next offering.
- Study and profit from your mistakes. Mistakes can offer priceless lessons, so learn from them, rather than run from them. Making mistakes and becoming smarter is the job of an entrepreneur, while not making mistakes is the job of an employee.
Failure is not usually a single event, but a collection of mistakes
and circumstances that add up to test the patience of founders. Failure,
combined with a strong sense of business ethics, can motivate and
produce innovation, while failure due to a lack of ethics can lead to
desperation. Certain types of failures -- like failures of integrity and
ethics -- are harder to recover from.
In the end, resilience and agility are really the only sustainable
edge in business. So when you experience your first failure, just give
up your ego, let it go and get back to work smarter on your next
success.
This story originally appeared on Young Entrepreneur
