Let’s Hope To Fail in Business | A ‘Dummies’ Guide to Entrepreneurship
I have started and been a part of various business ventures that have had significant failures. Some of the failures were big enough to result in the closure of the said businesses. Some failures resulted in the stagnation of business progress and my personal life. Entrepreneurs who experience failure all react differently. My name is Cliff, and my reaction is this article.
Rather than being a barrier to success, failure in business may be a stepping stone toward business success.
This is not a how-to guide to avoid failure in business. This article is meant to provide a unique perspective on entrepreneurship while embracing business failure and learning from it.
What I Learnt From Business Success
Business success is relative. From things that I consider as success in business, I didn’t learn much. Well, I did learn that I was right to have executed things as I did.
What I Learnt From Failure
1. I Wasn’t Ready
I could give you a million reasons why I started the business when I started. A lot of times I failed in business because I didn’t have the skills, resilience, and wit that it would take to maneuver and become profitable in the specific business I just started.
2. I Made Wrong Decisions
Whether it was listening to advise that I shouldn’t have been listening to or focusing on aspects of the business that didn’t matter in the long run I made wrong business decisions.
3. I Didn’t Cultivate a Strong Company Culture
A team is as strong as its weakest member. As a business owner, it was my responsibility to cultivate a strong company culture that not only favored different team members’ personalities but also made everyone work most efficiently. A good company culture would have enabled the team to inform me of problems much earlier on and we would have worked together in forming solutions.
4. I Didn’t Have Clear Goals
Starting a business can be exciting. Early on in the business, it is essential to set clear goals that act as building blocks toward the success of your business. I have had experiences where I was part of a venture that lacked clear visions and distinct goals. Having no clear goals made the business rapidly pivot and try various ideas with no measurement metric to determine a winning system.
5. I Diversified too Quickly
At times I was on the right path in business with a winning product. Such instances required me to double down on what was winning a create an efficient concrete structure around the product.
6. I Didn’t Understand My Target Audience
Right now my approach toward entrepreneurship is very different. In my previous system, I would Identity a good product with a lot of demand, then find the product's target audience. Now I identify a particular target audience that I would like to cater to, then I build a product/service for that specific target audience.
7. I Didn’t Appeal to My Target Audience
For many years I was selling products and services rather than connecting with my customers using my product and services. My sales were purely need-based and transactional. I didn’t understand the value of emotion and connection toward a product that would enable repeat sales and customer loyalty. An entrepreneur is a problem-solver and I didn’t appeal to my target audience by being the most efficient provider of solutions to the particular problems that I tried to solve with my business.
8. I Was Tolerant
Cutting corners in the guise of speed often lowers product quality. I was well aware of this fact as it happened and I did deserve to fail when I tolerated myself, business partners, and workers cutting corners in creating our product. Instead of cutting corners to save speed, I should have used the experience I had in my business to create an efficient work system that would save time and money in creating our product.
9. I Didn’t Work Efficiently
At times, I simply didn’t understand the value of time. I should have spent more time planning before starting projects. I should have doubled down on my skills and given opportunities to people who are more skilled than I am in certain areas. When allocating time I was supposed to give priority to the most important tasks.
10. I Wasn’t Data-informed
I do trust my instincts and I do listen to myself. My intuition is strong and has resulted in some of the biggest wins of my life. That said, I believe in using reliable data in making business decisions. From numbers about the size of the market to production costs and more I could have spent more time understanding the data. I could have used data to make better business decisions.
Conclusion
From failure, I learned a lot more than the 10 reasons I have provided above.
Business failure doesn’t have to result in the closure of the business. One of the ways to turn a failure around is by anticipating it before it happens and changing strategies in real time. Using reliable data instead of emotions to make business decisions helps as well.
I’d love to hear how you turned a failing business into a profitable venture. Kindly share your story below it may help other entrepreneurs in this space. Thanks!
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If you enjoyed this, read this article as well https://medium.com/@cliffamani123/old-people-can-t-dance-they-can-t-do-business-too-51d0fb5115e8
