None of us is perfect. Perhaps that is why we admire so-called successful people so much.
But behind almost every business success lies a series of failures. Just ask Thomas Edison, inventor of the electric lightbulb, or Richard Branson, who has made no secret of his past business failures, or even Luke Johnson, investor in and chairman of the recently-failed Patisserie Valerie and business blogger who has written extensively about failure and pertinently for him how to spot and prevent it.
Edison said of previously unsuccessful attempts at his invention: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
He also said: “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.” This along with learning the lessons from failure is the key to understanding how successful people approach failure.
Failure would be better rebranded as a trial and error approach to achieving goals where essentially each instance of failure is primarily a learning experience. Each failure simply requires humility that recognises our fallibility and a degree of honesty, thought and a willingness to learn.
Converting failure to success is all about attitude
A business failure can be a devastating experience but the worst things you can do are wallow in self-pity, sink into a depression, give up or, even worse, blame others. These characterise the behaviour of a victim.
There are plenty of business gurus with advice about dealing with failure, and most will start with advising you to accept that you may have been to blame, but the key is to move on by analysing what, precisely, went wrong and to then try again, differently. Trial and error.
Firstly, you should resist the urge to repeat past mistakes by trying the same thing again, only bigger or cheaper. For example, if your customers aren’t buying your products or services you need to give careful thought to whether your business offers something they want, in the way they can buy it, rather than something you thought was a great idea but they don’t want or don’t know about. How much market research did you actually do?
Secondly, how competent are you at running a business? Did you have a business plan? Did you regularly check cash flow, produce management accounts and so on? Did you put in place robust credit control and other processes? We cannot all be good at everything so if you feel you do not understand any of these subjects properly you should have the humility to get in expert help and be willing to act on it.
Were you sufficiently passionate and committed to your business? It may have seemed like a sure fire way to make a lot of money, but that, on its own, is no guarantee of success. It is also important to be emotionally invested in what you are doing and committed to making it work.
There are plenty of inspiring examples of people who have become successful after multiple failures but what they all have in common is an ability to be honest with themselves and to learn from others, to be passionate about their idea and to never give up.