Heritage

Learning how to move on after your business fails vital

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Confident business men and women feel competent from the inside out. They use their knowledge and talents to genuinely try to be useful and succeed at hand. Photo/Fotosearch

A young aspiring farmer is almost giving up on his dream to make some profit out of an honest living. He has an acre of land and has grown pineapples. They are doing well but his neighbours and uninvited guests seem to be enjoying the fruits of his labour.

They are stealing his fruits.

This is an obstacle that he had not envisioned or planned for when he set out to grow his cash crop. It has crippled him, to conclude, that he cannot keep growing pineapples.

He is somewhat lucky as he is young and can afford to make mistakes before he finally realises how to make a sustainable profit. But with business, one has to be mentally prepared for pitfalls and challenges that might even make one close up shop and have to go back to the drawing board to create ways of starting a new.

Getting up after a major shake or fall and making it is the true way to success. All business persons must understand that one has to fail a number of times to effectively make it in business.

Businesswomen take falling slightly differently as compared to businessmen when they fall.

Women tend to take their failure much more personally, internalise it, take a little more time to recover and sometimes even give up on their pursuit to financial happiness and independence.

A study done by the Global Entrepreneurship Fund and Babson College revealed that women had lower perception capabilities, self esteem and confidence than men when endeavouring to establish and run a business.

Women also tend to over analyse issues and end up thinking too much about the possibility of failure that it takes longer for them to actually start a business; and when they fall – getting back up is much harder.

Once business people realise that you cannot pursue something that is going to effectively work well and fall in place over night, then, half the battle of succeeding has been won.

Failures are never the end. In fact, it can be a way of getting back to the drawing board and thinking up new creative ways of starting a fresh. Failures must be expected when starting a venture, but expecting and accepting failure are two disparate things.

Accept failure
Many do not accept failure and some do not even understand what they are going through; a good support system, individual focus and motivation must prevail and the notion that you cannot just give up after your first failure.

Overcoming and conquering your fear should be the first step. Knowing what your fears are, understanding them, dealing with them and moving on with a clearer picture, is key.

A lot of time can be wasted thinking about why you failed and why it did not work; but its working and doing the business that ends the failing procrastination. Get up, dust yourself off and try again – but with a much better understanding.

There are many reasons that startups or businesses fail and some entrepreneurs could be in denial when dealing with their own ideas and concepts. Before you get up again, try and focus and write a list of what went wrong so you may not plunge into the same hole again.

Pick the right team, get professional advice, try separate yourself from the rest - in order to achieve your own niche, do not get stuck on your original idea (chances are, if you failed the idea was not well executed), do not spend too much money – most people think that having a lot of money is fundamental in doing business; that, is but a fallacy – you can make much out of very little.

Feeling jaded should be the last option for an entrepreneur or business person. Self confidence too, plays an important role in making it after a fall.

Confident business men and women feel competent from the inside out. They use their knowledge and talents to genuinely try to be useful and succeed at hand.

Truth is, to succeed in business – having self- confidence is vital. Most successful business men and women have some level of confidence; yet there are days, minutes, hours or weeks in the business person’s life when they are unsure of how to tackle some challenges- everyone at one time goes through these shaky times – but the trick is to stay on track and not let a trying time hold you back to achieving business success.

Lastly – never give up; push as much as you can within your capability and sit back to watch your hard work come into play.