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.”
Ask most entrepreneurs how many time they have failed and they will say”more times than I can count”. Most will have their share of success, but it is rarely close to equal. The failures far outweigh the successes. As a business owner you have to be OK with that, because once you stop failing, you will have stopped trying to innovate. It’s the nature of the business of being an entrepreneur, and of success in general. [Read more…]
