Business Failure
Show me a successful businessman and I will show you a man or a woman who had failed several times in several ventures. One of the ironies of life is that in order to be successful, you need to fail several times unless probably if you are lucky or if you are exceptionally good.
Whether we admit it or not, failure is never fun. As a businessman, nothing could be more painful than facing squarely the sad truth that your business has finally come to the end of its rope. It is time to close down your doors. This can be both devastating financially and psychologically.
How do we effectively deal with business failure?
1) Change of perspective – One of the greatest minds and entrepreneurs in the 20th century was Thomas Edison. At the age of 67, his laboratory and factory was destroyed by fire. His famous response… “There’s value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God, we can start anew.”
This man, Edison, tried more than 1000 experiments before making his incandescent lamp invention work. When asked for his comment about failing 1000 times before coming up with his invention, he recounted that he never failed. It just happened that the incandescent lamp invention is just a 1000-step experiment.
2) Learn from this expensive lesson – To fail once is part of growing and learning process. But to repeat the same mistakes over and over again is foolishness.
How do you learn from your mistake and make sure that you don’t miss your precious lessons?
Do a post mortem analysis. Post mortem analysis is the process of analyzing what went wrong with the failed business venture. Why did your business fail? What can you learn from the experience? How can you do better next time? What is the situation teaching you? List down the answers to the questions and be sure to keep them in your journal so that you have something to go back when you are starting your next ventures.
3) Start again – Real entrepreneurs are relentless, persistent and stubborn. They feel the fear but do them anyway. They feel the pain but they stand up again and try to do better next time. Rest if you need to. But be sure to set your time table to plan and start another business again in the future.
I have my own shares of business failures. It was painful. But the best thing that I did, in hindsight, is to start another one after the hard fall.
