Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Failing Fast

Generally speaking, people seem to consider failure and success to be two sides to a coin. We've all heard that 9 out of 10 businesses fail. Given common perception, is it fair to say that 9 out 0f 10 business owners, then, have failed? Seth Godin says here that venture capitalists are more likely to work with second or third time entrepreneurs. 

With no scientific data whatsoever, I'm going out on a limb and say that second and third time entrepreneurs have a higher success rate than first timers do. Given that, I propose we change the statement to "9 out of 10 business owners take the next step in their entrepreneurial careers", or something to the like. The original is simply too negative, and negativity breeds friends of ill repute. 

My unsolicited advice to everybody is to simply embrace failure. Seek it out. Fail fast, fail often, and fail gloriously. For while failure and success do not oppose one another, success is sweeter when built on the fiery ruins of failure. 

And remember... failure is not the opposite of success; quitting is