Failed Businesses: It's okay

Even though what you see is the success, every success is built off the back of a learnings or failure. Society spends most of the time celebrating the successes of business, but never really discussing the challenges, heartaches, losses, doubts and hardships. To add insult to injury to this, thanks to social media there is an ever-increasing social pressure to hid the negative and portray this success, win, #entrepreneuriallife vision. When the sad fact to this is #entrepreneuriallife can be lonely, can be heartbreaking and can be a real struggle for many.

 ‘With Great Risk comes Great Reward’ Thomas Jefferson. This is in part true, but is also missing an addition to this statement, which sadly befalls a lot of the great successes first. Great Loss, even though great risk comes great reward, there is also room for great loss. In todays society and culture, there is a very big stigma behind social media and portraying your failures as they can be seen as a failure or weakness. When you truly start to dig into some of the biggest successes of all time, you will see that there has been just as big of failure prior to their success.

1.  Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison tried more than 10,000 times to invent the light bulb. When he was asked of his failures, he replied that it was definitely over 9000.

2.  Walt Disney

We all know Walt Disney, but what is not well known is that he was fired from a newspaper as editor, for not having good ideas and no imagination. He is now worth over a reported $35 Billion Dollars.

3.  Fred Smith

Founder of Fed Ex. Smith’s college professor stated that his concept for Federal Express was interesting but absolutely not feasible.

Now considering these three very well-known people/businesses. Each one has had a major setback or rejection in their process to create their dream or idea. Is it from their family upbringing, schooling and childhood… it is a wonder what has made them so persistent and resilient. I still to this day remember my first company, what my family said and what my friends thought. I had bought into this grand idea that I was going to build this Personal Training company, whilst being a famous actor, where I was going to be earning millions… I was starry-eyed. Back then I thought I could do anything and that it would just come to me.

The truth is, I think we all go through this at one point in our lives, the sad part is this stage to me is what potentially defines our future. You either break through this first wall, or you accept that business and entrepreneurial ship is not for you. At a time when you should be encouraged and guided, it is potentially a time when you don’t have any of that. The idea of owning a company and not buying a house, was a foreign concept to my family and friends, one which years later they are by far my biggest supports.

 I reminisce about the gyms that I worked at and partnered with to try build my business. I spent money on business cards, flyers, social media… nothing was working. I tried negotiating my rates to try get clients. I tried coaxing people to continue to train with me. It even got to a point that I was almost giving away my time to be a personal trainer… There were many learning curves that I experienced in this journey and the biggest one was two things – strategic business planning and passion.

 If I am not passionate about something, there is no way I can convince someone to buy what I was selling if I wouldn’t buy it myself. I loved training myself, but I absolutely hated training other people, I was not passionate about it. I was an interesting journey, I read all the books and bought into all the hype, yet I just wasn’t passionate about coaching one on one. Passion is a very personal thing, it is not something that can be forced, but the greatest learnings you can have when it comes to being passionate, is to be able to acknowledge when you are not in face passionate about what your doing.

 A perfect example of being passionate and understanding your value and what you are selling is:

1.  Tim Ferris

Known for his best selling book ‘the 4 hour work week’ was turned down by 25 publishers before it was finally picked up. He is now estimated to be worth over $100 million.

2.  Oprah Winfrey

Winfrey was fired from her news reporter gig at a Baltimore news station. Oprah went on to build a successful following with ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’. With a reported net worth 2.7 billion dollars.

 Now I have been very lucky with my first business, it wasn’t a costly learning curve, it was an extremely valuable one. As a now Entrepreneur owning and operating multiple companies on three continents during a pandemic. I even now, still look back at this first failed business and remember the learnings I had received during this time and look to my current companies through that lense, to ensure they are continuing to grow.

 At the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, someone close to me shared some very poignant words, (I’m paraphrasing) Always first look within before you look without, compare within before you compare without. I was given this advice the day I chose to close and walk away from my first company. This was so ground breaking because during my first journey, there was several key things that I continued to do, which I shouldn’t have done.

1.  From the very beginning I would religiously compare myself to other trainers. ‘they have more clients than me, that’s not fair’, ‘they look fitter than me, what am I doing wrong’

2.  I would pretend everything was ok… avoid and pretend.

3.  I would always react whilst comparing and never think first.

What this meant at the time, now that I’m looking back, is:

-     I should have been slower in making my decisions.

-     If I looked inwards and I would have noticed that I was actually not passionate at all about personal training.

-     Stop comparing yourself to others, it is when you do this that you make some of your biggest mistakes. You divert from your Unique Selling Point.

 Even now, I know that with each risk there is a chance for failure, but should that failure happen, there is a reason, there is something I have not considered or something there for me to learn. Entrepreneurs are a special breed of people, they have a never ending fire or drive within them that is only surpassed by those people who are in the top 0.1% of their industry or sport. Today as an Entrepreneur it is very easy and simple to use smoke and mirrors to portray how successful you are, irrespective of truth. You simply have to focus within and let your success become known. 

I will leave you with something that my grandfather said to me.

‘Don’t shout out your success but let your success do the shouting for you’.