It was Henry Ford who said, “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” Growing up in this competitive world, the majority of us were taught from a very young age that failure is bad and that we need to succeed in everything we do. Way too many people walk around this place thinking business is all cupcakes and candy canes.
You may have been blindfolded to be thinking that failure is not an essential part of success and I’m here to set the record straight. I’ve started (and successfully failed) two companies already, and I might possibly have a third on the way. Am I to believe that I should just give up and that it was all for nothing, and should probably not do it ever again? NO! Failure is not bad. In fact, in my circumstances failure is a blessing and I’m going to tell you why.
“Those who try to do something and fail are infinitely
better than those who try nothing and succeed.”
-Lloyd Jones
CASE STUDY #1: Simply Hectic
I had just graduated high school, in the summer before college, and I met up with my friend Ryan. He had dropped out of school early (could have been a red flag) to go pursue his entrepreneur undertakings. We got to talking and since we were both interested in starting a business we began throwing around ideas. Great, right? Yeah I thought so too. He had some of his own things he was doing, but we laid out a plan for a company we could manage with our financial conditions and expertise levels.
We decided upon a graphic design t-shirt company, since he was an artist as well and it was relatively easy to set up. Out of the gate, we were working hard to make connections and things started to pick up. We even test marketed some of our designs for our shirts at local colleges and got some good reviews. I left for college in Orlando and he stayed in Miami and we figured we could make it work. He designed the website, we split the costs, and I also managed to get an artist I met in Orlando to design some shirts for us. Things were going great, but for no rhyme or reason, just completely fall apart on us.
Here’s where it went wrong: Ryan being an entrepreneur himself decided that he no longer wanted to be in business with me. He wanted to pursue his other things he was involved with. After a bit of hassle and bitterness, I agreed to have him to sign the forms to remove him as a managing member. Soon after that I realized that I could no longer financially maintain the business, since previously we were splitting the cost. So much to my dismay, my first failure was born and I had to close the business, really before it even made it to fruition.
Lesson Learned: Think about the long-term while selecting a business partner.
“Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would
do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with
plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this
failure, because you won’t. it’s whether you let it harden or shame you into
inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere”
-Barack Obama
CASE STUDY #2: Just Out Just In
My second business I decided to take a stab at was called Just Out Just In, or “JoJi” for short. After arriving at college, since I was quite interested in entrepreneurship, I joined an entrepreneur club called CEO Knights and became the Vice President my second year. The President at the time, was a girl named Terri, and we would often collaborate on various club matters. So one day we were getting lunch and she mentioned she bought this electroluminescent light-up shirt on eBay. To translate, that means it t-shirt basically lit up to the sounds of music and from the motions of dancing.
I was fascinated by the concept and I jokingly said it would be a great item to sell to college students since the majority enjoys going to the club and what not. Well it didn’t take long before we were actually working towards making a company out of it. We planned it out, got a distributor in China, made connections, got the website designed, and got everything up and running for an e-commerce site. My first company that I brought to fruition and I was stoked! We started advertising and looking for ways to bring in more sales. When you perceive things to be going well, this is usually when that unexpected turn hits.
We realized that we weren’t making many sales because although people liked our product, there was no social acceptance of it so people felt downright awkward wearing it. Right when we were going to figure out a way to combat that, once again my partner bailed on me because she was graduating from college soon and didn’t think she’d have time (she should have thought about that and told me before we started). Not to mention we were both $1,000 deep in this company. I ran into the same problem when she bailed and couldn’t financially support the company myself sending JoJi to where so many businesses go… the business GRAVEYARD.
Lesson Learned: Do your research and determine if there is a market for your product or service and really, really, really make sure you are selective with your business partners.
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
-Robert F. Kennedy
I Failed. So What, Now What?
It doesn’t really matter because those failures paved the way to my successes of today and successes of the near future. I would not have been the same person today if I didn’t make those mistakes and learn from them. Now I have a story to tell. People have mentioned the term “failing your way forward” and that’s precisely what it is you have to do. Realize that your going to fail, its inevitable, so you might as well get them out-of-the-way right? What you should know is that the best experience comes from our downfalls so just think of it as an expensive education.
The fact of the matter is, entrepreneurs are insane, Albert Einstein said that insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” And that just perfectly sums up the fact that despite are failures we keep retrying the same things expecting the next time to be a success. So if were going to be doing it over and over again, were bound to fail. So get good at failing, because failure can excel you to new heights.
