Failure used to be a dirty word. For some people, it still is. But for anyone who’s tried to hang their own shingle, start their own side venture, or just do something different than what they’ve always done? Failure almost seems par for the course. My own experience was with my first ‘side’ business fixing computers. While I knew what I was doing (and did a good job) what I didn’t take into consideration was the actual TIME it would take.
Going to people’s homes (or having them bring it to me) was a big chunk of time I never anticipated. And when I was at a clients home, I couldn’t do much else, so there was not much else I could do in that time. Big waste. And since it was a lot of ‘waiting’ for things to happen (running scans, installing software, backing up data, etc) my fees ended up being low compared to the time I had to spend there. When I began my freelance career in web design / development, I remembered that and incorporated hourly rates for certain work.
So how about you: What was YOUR biggest failure? What did you learn from it?
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh baby I have a good one for this.
Out of university I spend 18 months building my first business that was developing an innovative product. After 18 months I closed the company down because I couldn’t be bothered anymore. I ended up having to invest a fair bit of money to close the books. Another 4 months later and someone made a killing using a very similar product to the one I developed and is probably a millionaire by now.
I’m not bitter though, honest.
ewww
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My startup WebDev company took our first big project from a good friend/boss of mine that I was currently working part-time for. Long story short, due to many internal issues the project didn’t get finished until 3months after it’s original due date. I felt like I really let my boss down and couldn’t look him in the eye for a while.
But. now I can! (im stronger!)
Like Jonny & Mark, my failure is also related to my first business. The first business I started after quitting my job was Shortcut to China – a business which recruited American students for internships in China. It failed as a result of my lack of knowledge, experience, and partnership issues. This was the best thing that could have happened, however. As a result of this, I learned to focus on my core strengths and have since developed three businesses, all of which are doing very well. Failure is the best learning tool.
This thread reminds me of two quotations from Winston Churchill:
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”
and
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Having said that, I’ve had my share of successes and failures. My observation is that to be successful, you have to take risks and fail along the path to success.
University
This reminds me of two Winston Churchill quotations that I heard recently:
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”
And
“Success is not final, failure is not final; it is the courage to continue that counts.”