7 Things Every Entrepreneur Must Know About Failure

Failure is an inevitable part of life. We win some and we lose some. But what’s most important, is how we rise after every fall.

In the Chinese martial arts, the fighter is taught how to fall, how to manage a few hits, but most importantly, how to stand up again, outsmart the enemy, and win the battle. This very concept is what every entrepreneur will go through.

You’d get knocked down a lot by disappointments, angry customers, bad products, unbelievable expenses, and even failed businesses. But how you respond to it every single time will not just determine how much stronger you get, but how much closer you are to growing a successful business.

If you’re a new or existing entrepreneur, here are 7 things about failure you must know:

See Also: 5 Habits That Will Guarantee You Fail In Life

1). You Have To Fail Fast:

Yes, you heard that right! While many may scream that failure is a terrible thing, in its entirety, it is not. It is important you make mistakes (and so many of them) really fast, so you can totally understand the way the market works from every angle.

While there’re usually so many mistakes that could be made, when you’re finally through the major hurdle, you would come out on top.

2). Failure Is Only A Lesson:

Just as it is important to fail fast, you’d also learn fast. Every failed event comes with a lesson learnt. This is the core reason good luck at an early stage can be a terrible thing, because when the person eventually fails, it’s always very difficult for them to rise up again, since they lack the resilience and experience a person who has failed severally possesses.

See Also: 5 Warning Signs Your Business Is About To Fail

3). Focus Almost All Your Efforts On Your Strengths:

Forget about your weaknesses. You need to build them alright, but at the expense of what? When you focus on your strengths, you grow faster and stronger, you stay ahead of the curve in your lane, and people ultimately look up to you.

When you reach the pinnacle of your strengths, then, you can begin to fix your weaknesses. A great example is a company who manufactures and sells out thousands of sachets of dairy milk products everyday in Nigeria, but decides to focus more on manufacturing protein shakes, which may sell not more than a few tens or hundreds daily. Every time spent improving the protein business decreases the chances of the milk production business gaining market dominance. Instead of focusing on both, focus first, on the milk production business. By the time it’s at its peak, trying to build up the protein sales to match up the small market available would be a great idea.

4). Failure Is A Part Of The Process:

If you’ve never failed, then you’ve never really been a true success. Failure is a part of the entrepreneurial process everyone must learn to surmount. You fail not because you’re a failure, but because you’re a part of the learning curve. When you come to terms that failure is largely inevitable, and that with every challenge you face, you turnout wiser, then, you can someday become truly successful.

See Also: You Will Fail As An Entrepreneur If You Do These 5 Things

5). Know When You Have To Stop:

Sometimes we hold on tight to a business, relationship, or anything in this similar category, because of the amount of time and effort we’ve invested into it. While it could be really painful to know your efforts may have gone to waste, it’s even more depressing if you hold on to it for far longer, only to eventually let go and accept your fate.

If you’d make a great entrepreneur, you need to know when to stop! Else, you’d end up with a life of regrets.

6). Give Yourself Time To Recover:

After closing up a business that took so much of your energy, time, and money, it’s important to take some time off to reflect on everything that went wrong. Carefully analyse your short-comings, where you did good, and where you’d improve on if you were given another chance.

By spending valuable time on self-reflection, you wouldn’t just come to understand what truly killed your business, but you’d also grow as a person, and come out stronger in your next startup endeavour.

See Also: 10 Reasons Your Business Will Fail In A Recession, And What You Can Do To Avoid That

7). Ensure No One You Know Fails The Way You Did:

After every victory or defeat, a lesson is learnt. The reason history books are written aren’t just to amuse a people, but to teach a generation. When you study the past, you gain years of experience in weeks of reading. And as you implement what you’ve learnt, your execution gets better.

The core importance of helping others learn from your mistakes, is to ensure that no one else makes them again. This doesn’t just make wary minds careful, but also helps a society develop faster.

If you’ve succeeded or failed in any endeavour, ensure you make as many people as you know, that wants to go into the same venture, learn from your experience.

What are your thoughts on these 7 things every entrepreneur must know about failure? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Image Source: venturebeat.com