Entrepreneurs Should Learn To Fail

This article is #3 in the series on Entrepreneurship and continued from #-Link-Snipped-#

Thanks to our education system that rewards you when you are right and punishes you when you are wrong. We grow up thinking that we must be right at all the stages to be successful. By the time we graduate our brains are programmed to think that if we fail; we’ll be doomed! This feeling prevents a lot of wannabe entrepreneurs from actually starting out.

#-Link-Snipped-#Entrepreneurship is full of failures – like or not. There’s no escape. There isn’t a single entrepreneur who’s not failed. I’d strongly recommend all of you to read Richard Branson’s autobiography titled “Losing My Virginity”. The key is not to quit when everything goes wrong.

I have failed many times and still continue to fail. Every failure is a great source of education for an entrepreneur. I remember the days when I had to spend nights search for some little piece of information just to add new feature to the site. I learned a great deal of Internet security after we got hacked in 2006. A hacker compromised our website and I was totally helpless for noone around me knew how to fix the things and get everything back. It was 48 sleepless hours that taught me the importance of security and backups. That learning has saved lot of money, time and efforts in the long run. Had I not learned from those mistakes, I'd have continued to suffer and maybe we'd have wind-up the website by now. Is the learning over now? Absolutely not! I learn new techniques every day and have developed a habit of asking questions. It does make me look stupid at times; but its way better than being stupider in the long run.

Failure at various stages is an integral part of entrepreneurship. When an entrepreneur is exploring an area he/she is not experienced in (management, administration, marketing, advertising, technology, HR etc.) mistakes are bound to happen. Be quick to learn from mistakes and make sure you don’t repeat them.

Tip: Be prepared to make lot of mistakes and be quick to learn from them.