Failure: The Start Of Success

Failure. This is a word that we would never want to describe ourselves as or even experience. However, despite its negative connotations, failure is, for a lot of people the beginning of something great! Here are two examples:

There was a man who was a top software engineer and worked for 12 years at Yahoo. He had a great CV, had a great degree from a top university and applied for jobs at both Facebook and Twitter, but got rejected from both. He then got together with a fellow ex-Yahoo employee to create an app. 5 years later this app was sold to Facebook for $19 billion. This was Brian Acton, the co-founder of Whatsapp.

There was a lady who was diagnosed with clinical depression. Her marriage had failed and she was jobless with a dependent child. She was on a four hour delayed train journey from Manchester to London when she came up with this idea. She then started to write this book about this wizard. Once she finished, she took it to 12 publishers and was rejected by all 12. This lady is J.K. Rowling.

Both these people are living proof that failure should not be the end and that grit and determination will help you achieve success in your business venture. However, failure will not help us be successful if we don’t learn from it.

So how should you deal with failure?

Psychologically, failure makes our goals seem a lot tougher, it shatters your motivation and can make you feel helpless. But there is always a flip side to everything. First you have got to sit down with a pen and some paper and work out what caused the failure. This could be, your pricing was too high, or the quality of the product wasn’t good enough, or you rushed into a service you could not provide at a good standard. Make sure you come up with three constructive criticisms and note these down. For me I save them in my phone on notes to look back on when I get into tricky situations and ensure I don't make the same mistakes twice. Once you have these lessons you can take them into revamping your current business or into a new venture. The lessons we learn from failure builds the foundations for a successful business.

Next week we will be speaking to a young entrepreneur, Darren Tenkorang, founder of Trim-it, who has gone through failure and see how he dealt with it and where he is now.

To finish off, the following scene from “The Bridge of Spies” can inspire us to not let failure get to us and keep standing tall regardless of our failures. So when you think nothing is going your way remember the saying: “Stoikiy muzhik”.

#Failure #SuccessStories #StandingMan #BrianActon #JKRowling