Anyone who's attended my workshops on entrepreneurship, business plans or marketing strategy knows that I'm a huge fan of Hugh MacLeod and gapingvoid.com. Go to Hugh's sight and you can sign up for his daily cartoon, which really his running commentary on entrepreneurship, business, the world and life, and it happens to have an interesting drawing. Hugh uses a humorous drawing mostly to identify entrepreneurial truths in the business world. Hugh is also a genius marketer.
Anyway, one of his recent daily cartoons addressed the idea of failure. (Click on the link to view the cartoon.) His point isn't that failure is good, but that we need to learn from our mistakes if we are to be successful entrepreneurs. I would add, we need to learn from our mistakes to be successful people. We all make mistakes, the key is, in the words of Fred Astaire from the 1936 movie Swing Time, can you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again?
Most successful entrepreneurs that I know readily admit to frequent failures in the beginning and even now that they have "made it". The key is learning from your mistakes and not making the same ones over and over again. An oft quoted SBA statistic is that over 80% of new businesses fail. Whatever the specifics of that statistic, the truth is that entrepreneurs are far more successful if they get a little guidance and education. Get a mentor, establish a board of directors or advisors, take a class in accounting or marketing. Heck, you could even hire me! Whatever your preference, get some help in the areas in which you are weak, and learn from your mistakes.
Do you any classic failures you'd like to talk about? Leave a comment.
Anyway, one of his recent daily cartoons addressed the idea of failure. (Click on the link to view the cartoon.) His point isn't that failure is good, but that we need to learn from our mistakes if we are to be successful entrepreneurs. I would add, we need to learn from our mistakes to be successful people. We all make mistakes, the key is, in the words of Fred Astaire from the 1936 movie Swing Time, can you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again?
Most successful entrepreneurs that I know readily admit to frequent failures in the beginning and even now that they have "made it". The key is learning from your mistakes and not making the same ones over and over again. An oft quoted SBA statistic is that over 80% of new businesses fail. Whatever the specifics of that statistic, the truth is that entrepreneurs are far more successful if they get a little guidance and education. Get a mentor, establish a board of directors or advisors, take a class in accounting or marketing. Heck, you could even hire me! Whatever your preference, get some help in the areas in which you are weak, and learn from your mistakes.
Do you any classic failures you'd like to talk about? Leave a comment.
No comments:
Post a Comment