Learn To FAIL WITH STYLE Before You Yearn For SUCCESS: All Of You Aspiring Entrepreneurs. Fall Seven Times But Stand Up Eight. Old Japanese Proverb. The problem with this generations entrepreneurs is that they plan so much for everything to go right that they never learn from their failures. They want everything to go perfect. Business Plans, Presentations, Research studies, Market Shares, Growth Plans, Expansion studies and the list can go on. Everything BUT starting a business and taking the risk. They want the numbers to match perfectly to their plans i their minds before they start to take the plunge. Looking for investors and want to get ALL the financing in hand even before they open doors. They want 3 years expenses in the bank. They want to hire a GREAT TEAM before they even launch a product. Basically, they want to learn how to swim before they even step into the pool. How is that possible ? Ask them and they will tell you that they are doing it the right way. 3 out of 4 new businesses FAIL. Yes, 3 out of 4. And the one that survives does not mean that it succeeds. It just survives the first few years. Many times hand to mouth. What are the reasons that these businesses fail ? Is it because lack of funding ? Or is it lack of planning ? Neither in my experience. All the money in the world can not guarantee success of a business neither can all the planning. The greatest barrier to success is the FEAR of failure. You may not realize that but if you keep looking for perfection before you start your business, you will wait all your life. If you think that after falling you will be a FAILURE than you do not know a thing about SUCCESS. It is he ability to FAIL STYLISHLY that creates the confidence in you to succeed. I am not saying that you should look forward to failing, but if you are not ready to fail you are not READY TO SUCCEED. Remember that tomorrow is a new day with NO MISTAKES in it. So if you fail look forward to another day of starting a fresh. Another major reason why new entrepreneurs fail is because of their EGO. They think that nobody can do it better than them because they were the PIONEERS of a certain idea. If that was the case, we would still be driving steam engine cars of late eighteen hundreds. We would still be using the first IBM BIG BLUE that occupied a room to compute a few digits. EGO is one of the biggest hindrances to success for budding entrepreneurs of our time. All of you young kids need to learn that there are people who will join you and DO IT BETTER THAN YOU. If you want your ego to be satisfied, then you will not like it but if you want your company to succeed, you will be jumping with joy that there are people who you can rely on. Do not ever worry about failures but worry about the chances you will miss out on of learning if you do not fail. There is no such thing in life as a constant success. There are more failures in life than successes. What counts is how you expand upon the few successes that you get and run with it and build upon it. Competition after competition of entrepreneurship in Pakistan i have seen where judges sit LITERALLY JUDGING those young brilliant kids instead of teaching and mentoring. Within a few minutes they reject or approve an idea. What an idiotic approach ? Its not the idea that will turn into a business but its the EXECUTION of that idea that makes it generate employment for others and revenues. All these competitions only try in most cases to attract investors... And in most cases none of the judges have the ability to mentor an idea for the youth. They have not a clue as to how the VC structure works in the world. They do not know what international market penetration will be for the product. These judges themselves have rarely been entrepreneurs themselves and even if they were, what was the level of success they attained after learning from their failures. Nobody wants to teach the youngsters about OPEN EMBRACING failure and turning it into a stepping stone towards success. The word ENTREPRENEURSHIP has become CHIC these days. Most of the people do not even understand what it means to be an entrepreneur. it is not about generating revenues and buying a Ferrari for yourself. Its about creating a product that changes the way world perceived a certain service or a product earlier. Its about creating employment for others and sharing the ownership of he company. Its about leading the company by taking the blame for yourself and giving the credit to others. Its about making your team BRAVE and PREPARED for adversities. It is important to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure in business. I have failed so many times in life that i can not even count. I have fallen on my face. I have been depressed. I have wanted to give up. I have wanted to leave the world of business BUT I DID NOT because every time i failed i learned so much that i became literally addicted to learning and from that learning came success. Stop being afraid to fail. Stop over preparing to take the first step. Do not be afraid to start small. do not be afraid to FAIL ALONG THE WAY. Stop over thinking because it will lead to hesitation and if hesitation becomes a part of your thought process YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO START ANY VENTURE. Remember: Those who try to do something and FAIL are infinitely better than the ones who try to do nothing and SUCCEED.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 19:08:38 +0000