“Failure is success if we learn from it.” Malcolm S. Forbes, Entrepreneur
Can you picture yourself devoting 5 years of your life creating 5000+ versions of a product that does not work? That’s what happened to James Dyson, the inventor of cyclonic vacuum technology. It took him 5 long years before he successfully invented the world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner.
Starting up a business can sometimes feel a bit of craziness and obsession. For Dyson’s case, his persistence paid off in the long run. He was able to create a multi-billion dollar company which is known for its dynamic and innovative designs. He has sold millions of vacuum cleaners across the globe. He noted that, “We have to embrace failure and almost get a kick out of it, not in a perverse way but in a problem-solving way. Life is a mountain of solvable problems and I enjoy that.”
You don’t need to have the answers to everything right away.
Our society is so fast-paced that we get access to information at the tip of our fingers. When someone asks you a question, you can just go ahead and get your laptop or smartphone and get answers in an instant. But is this true learning?
True learning is not easy at all. It is learning through first hand experience – but this does not mean that you need to stop researching questions online. My point here is to make us not forget that learning only needs to be easy, sometimes learning comes with difficulties.
Almost everyone I know hates failing. It is hurting, it makes you feel inadequate and incompetent. But a lot of successful entrepreneurs alway say that “Failure is the key to success, each mistake teaches us something.
Here are some of the tips I have learned from experts on how to become a successful entrepreneur:
- Be curious.
Be comfortable with the unknown. We fear making mistakes so much that sometimes we tend to miss a lot of opportunities in store for us just because of our fear of making mistakes. Be an explorer, take risks and be so curious that you surpass your own fears.
- Don’t settle on what’s the norm
Expand your horizons. Don’t settle on what’s conventional. Get out there and ask questions. Ask questions that are relevant to your cause. Here are some questions that researchers recommend asking ourselves and our teams:
- Picture yourself 10 years from now. What are the top three most important changes that have happened in your industry?
- What is the most useful strength you can use if your organization doubles in size?
- What would you do differently if you are given a chance to start your business all over again?
- Learn from your mistakes and try again
“Sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.” Dalai Lama
While it is true that failure is painful, being caught up in situations we don’t have control of is also painful as well. But these pains have their positive impact in the long run. What’s important is that we learn from our mistakes then we try again. According to HBR co-authors Tupper and Ellis, “Relearning is recognizing that how we apply our strengths is always changing and that our potential is always a work in progress. We need to regularly reassess our abilities and how they need to be adapted for our current context.”
These are some of the tips I learned from the experts on entrepreneurship. Always be curious, don’t settle on what’s the norm and learn from your mistakes and try again. These tips do not apply only to future business owners but we can apply this to our daily lives as well.