Failed Entrepreneurs – Is There Such a Thing?

Is there really such a thing as a failed entrepreneur? I ask this question because, in my opinion, if an entrepreneur has given up after a failure, then they really shouldn’t have called themselves an entrepreneur to begin with. Granted, there are some individuals who have either been born with a silver spoon in their mouth, or are just too damn talented to fail. Some people hit the nail on the head with their very first venture and as such they don’t really experience failure as a lot of us will. These individuals are few and far between though, and certainly not considered to be the ‘norm’.

What I’d like to focus on in this short article is the effect of failure on an entrepreneur because like it or not, 95% of us will at some point or another experience failure. Most of the time these failures will occur at the very beginning of your first venture. This has the effect of putting a lot of people off, and many times people will literally give up at the very first hurdle, adding themselves to the long list of failed entrepreneurs, or failed ‘non entrepreneurs’ as I’d call them.

Giving up is the last thing you want to do if you wish to succeed at anything. In my opinion the very thing that makes an entrepreneur an entrepreneur, is the ability to persist, to take failures in their stride and use their experiences to learn from their mistakes. If you have the ability to find something positive to take from your failures, then they need not be such a bad thing. They will actually change you as a person and if you work through the initial hurdles, you’ll be a much stronger individual. You know what they say about getting straight back on the bike after you fall off, right?

Another benefit of failure is a simple one, you won’t make the same mistake twice. Or at least you shouldn’t. I’d rather learn the hard way early on in a venture only to make a fundamental mistake a year down the line which would be a lot harder to reverse. In this case failure at an early level actually has a beneficial effect.

So the next time you fail, keep in mind that you’ll learn from it. Use the mistake to adjust your skills and techniques and come out a stronger person. I assure you that if you persevere, keep positive no matter what, and focus on your goals rather than the hurdles you need to jump over to get to them, then they WILL happen. If you spend time on the negatives and thinking “what if”, then your journey will end quicker than you think.

An entrepreneur who has beaten their failures and achieved success is a force to be reckoned with. Keep focused and stay positive.