If you’ve been to many motivational business seminars, chances are you’ve seen this scene from Apollo 13. Gene Kranz’s instructions to his crew that “failure is not an option” were entirely appropriate given the life and death consequences they were dealing with. But is that true in business? More importantly, can it and should it be true for business?
First, unless you’ve made some Faustian bargain where the devil gets your soul if your business fails, while difficult and tragic, business failures aren’t a matter of life and death. Second, by approaching a start-up business venture in this way, entrepreneurs, especially small business owners, could be trying to avoid the very thing that could catapult them on to great success.
Failure isn’t just an option for small business owners. For most, it’s reality at some point. While 80 per cent of small businesses make it through their first year, only about half make it to the five year mark and fewer than a third survive more than 10 years. That’s a pretty high failure rate.
Failure Comes with the Territory
It shouldn’t be all that surprising that the overwhelming majority of small business owners don’t succeed in the long term. First, SBOs are by their very nature “disrupters.” They’re coming into existing markets and upsetting all the apple carts. By offering similar services with high quality and/or lower prices, SBOs are a direct threat to the status quo of established businesses in any market. Those businesses inevitably push back, making it harder for the SBO to compete. Only the strong survive.
But what really kills small businesses in the long run isn’t just bigger competition. It’s an attitude that failure is the end. Too many times, small business owners decide to give up and “cut their losses” rather than forge ahead and try to rise from the ashes of failure.
Famous Failures
History is full of stories of entrepreneurs who failed miserably, picked up the broken pieces, analyzed their mistakes, and went forward toward great success. Akio Morita’s first product, a rice cooker that burned rice, was a miserable failure. He would go on to create Sony. Jeff Bezos’ first attempt at e-commerce was an online auction site called zShops. It failed, so you never heard of it. You probably have heard of one of the efforts that came out of that failure though: Amazon.
Whether it’s being fired from a job or launching a failed product, many of the world’s greatest businesses owe their success to previous failures. In my own life, I’ve been cut from teams, lost jobs, and failed at business. But I’ve found the secret, the same secret that spurred those more famous failures I mentioned above: failure is the source of invaluable information and motivation that leads to greater success.
An Opportunity to Learn and Grow
Think about it. When football teams watch game film, where do they learn? From the plays that were executed flawlessly and went for touchdowns? No, they learn from the missed assignments and team breakdowns that lead to losses and turnovers. Think about motivation. Constant success, whether earned or given, creates a sense of complacency. Failure has the power to light a fire that can’t be extinguished.
Now we shouldn’t aim to fail. That’s silly, but equally as absurd is the notion that failure is some sort of “death blow.” Failure is going to come to your life, if it hasn’t already. When that happens, count it as a blessing and be ready to use the feedback from that event to shape what you do next.
Your next attempt might be a small tweak to your business model…or it could be a complete teardown and new beginning from scratch. Whichever it is, realize that you are the one who gives life…and death to your dream. Not a competitor, not an employer, not some unforeseen market force. You. Your dream isn’t dead until you stop breathing life into it.
So if you’re struggling in your small business dream, don’t sweat it. Embrace it. The failure you’re experiencing is just fuel for the fire that will brighten your future.
And if you need help pursuing that dream, contact us at Knuckleball Digital. We have over 50 years of experience working with successful small businesses and nonprofits and can help you get your message out to your customers through superior digital marketing services. We can help you get the story of your product or service to your customers so they can help you achieve your dream.