Is failure really the mother of success?

Is failure a good or a bad thing in business? Most people may answer that it is a “bad thing” because obviously, no one plans to fail, but sometimes, it takes failure to succeed. In this post, we look at 8 reasons why failure in business isn’t too bad after all.

Helps us appreciate the reality

Without failure, we are likely to become arrogant and think we have full knowledge of the world of business. It may even lead us to lose sight of the value of our customers, suppliers, government authorities, and many other business stakeholders. We can easily feel invincible to the extent that we fail to see the need for advertising, prudence in resource management, and even proper human resource management.

Also Read: How the world’s most successful founders approach failure

When we fail in business, we are able to sit back and reflect on what went wrong and what we can do to improve going forward. It is a strong rallying call back to reality; back to respecting every employee, customer, investor, and any other person or thing that is significant to your business.

It is the best chance of learning from our mistakes

Sometimes failure is the best teacher in the world of business. As much as we look for case studies and learn from other people’s success or failure stories, we still need to make our own mistakes in order to qualify as established entrepreneurs.

And don’t get me wrong: No one should go out looking for failure, but if it comes, then the best thing to do is take it in our stride and move on, better and wiser. Think of a case where your failure came as a result of not acquiring the right legal documents or the right insurance covers for your business. There is a high chance that you will never repeat that mistake ever again.

Prepares us for future downtime

Why did you fail in the first place? Sometimes we fail not because we did something wrong but because of strong external forces that are beyond our control. For example, changes in your niche may happen so fast and throw you off balance, maybe because you don’t have the right tools needed to withstand the changes.

Or maybe the government introduced new business tariffs that significantly hindered your business. Or maybe some politically-motivated decisions were made by those in power and they affected your business negatively. The good thing is that you now know that these things can happen in business and you will, therefore, be better prepared for a rainy day when they hit you next time.

It’s a new dawn

This might sound like a big, fat joke to many but it is true: Failure marks the beginning of a new dawn. It is the perfect time to rebuild and do things right. When you fail, hit the restart button, dust yourself, and move on. What’s more, if you succeed in getting back on your feet after a failure, you will have developed a thick skin, a higher level of courage, and an inner strength that you didn’t have before. You will have tons of doubters to prove wrong and that will make you perform even better this time. This is one chance that only comes once in an entrepreneur’s life.

Teaches us to self-motivate

Being able to motivate yourself when everyone around you is losing patience with you is vital in succeeding in business. After failure, people who hang around you just to get a share of your success will leave and only the ones who truly believe in your ability will remain. And when everyone abandons you, you motivate yourself back and work towards success. In the future, that helps you to work your socks off without caring whether or not someone is watching.

Also Read: Learning from early failures: An inside look at Singaporean startup Outside

Challenges make entrepreneurs strong

With the right entrepreneurial spirit, you definitely see every setback as a challenge, not a failure per se. You probably even have plans B, C, and D in case plan A fails. In that case, failure makes you want to try other plans and approaches. It even helps you discover strengths that you never imagined you had.

It eliminates fear

Sometimes we fail because of our fear of failure. New technology is injected into your niche but your fear of uncertainty prevents you from leveraging it. You get new ideas, but you put them on hold for the fear that they aren’t good enough. Then, out of nowhere, failure strikes! That is the point where you learn that being careful and slow adaptor isn’t always a guarantee that everything will run smoothly. When rebuilding, therefore, you implement ideas without the fear of failure.

Conclusion

After tasting both failure and success, this would be a great time to become a life coach and be helping upcoming entrepreneurs to make the right business decisions. What’s more; you will make another revenue-generating opportunity out of it.

—

Editor’s note: e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

Join our e27 Telegram group here, or our e27 contributor Facebook page here.

The post The importance of failure: 7 reasons why it makes us better entrepreneurs appeared first on e27.