by: Lisa Saylor
Failure is a must to succeed in business and in life. So often we are told we can not fail, it’s a bad thing. From the time we start to school, till we go to the here after, fail, that 4 letter word is a bad thing. It is almost like a curse. My question is how do we learn and continue to grow if we don’t fail? How do we succeed in business if we don’t fail?
I started my first Home Based Business 2 years ago. I invested over $6000 just for the web site and the 10 mentoring sessions. That was on top of the $250 initial fees for set and a merchant account, that doesn’t include all the little fees (no one expects). What I received for this was an online store, web site, 2000 free useless hits, link exchanges (that I had to pay for and didn’t need to) and oh yes the useless mentoring sessions (that didn’t teach me anything). I worked hard on this site for 6 months (which doesn’t seem like a long time), except they told me I would be able to make back all my invested money in the first 3 months. I made nothing, and eventually lost over at least a $7000.00 before I decided to shut it down. To top it all off the company I went through gave me a hard time about shutting down the site and my merchant account. I had failed miserably. You would have thought that I would have been angry and upset, and initially I was. I received the “I told you so” looks, the rhetoric 9 out of 10 businesses fail etc. when I told people my business had failed.
But what no one realized is that I had learned so much. Not only did I learn what not to do, I also learned, that regardless of my business “failing,” that I loved the ownership of it and that no matter how many times the business didn’t pan out that I would continue to learn, grow, and to build businesses.
So since then I have looked over other online businesses, done background research, and have started another; that I am happy to say seems to be doing well. By failing, all that did was whet my appetite to do it again. 9 out of 10 businesses fail, but it is the 1 time that it doesn’t fail that I am after. So, when you look at your failures, look at them as a way to succeed, that has given you a wealth of knowledge and that knowledge is what you need to succeed in life and in business.