A failed business, especially a startup, can have a demoralizing impact on you as an entrepreneur. However, if the time to harvest valuable lessons is taken, it can make the entrepreneur stronger and more prepared to succeed the second time around. If you’ve been thrown into the pit of failure, pick yourself back up and use that experience to mold your future success. The best thing that you can do is try and sell your business (you can look at this website here for more information: retireat21.com) and just get back at it when you feel ready. Sure the first business you started didn’t work, but now you can learn from your mistakes and make sure that your next business is a lot better.
Tips for Bounce Back from a Business Failure
Here are some tips for bouncing back like a pro when your business fails.
Embrace Failure
It is common for successful entrepreneurs to view failure not as a setback but as an asset, as a tool to become better, to educate themselves, and to prepare for something new. We can say failure is a prerequisite to successes. There’s nothing wrong with failing and taking a step in a different direction when needed. Each failure opens up a number of possibilities of new options. This is where your problems can become opportunities.
It is true, even outside the world of business, failures will contribute heavily to your growth. Even knowing this, we still fear the thought of actually failing. We fear it because of the immediate negative impact it will have on us. It’s natural to steer clear of anything we fear, even if the long term effects are beneficial.
This attitude is brought over to our businesses. You do research behind the scenes and produce a product based on a guess what customers might want. You mass produce the product and behold, it flops on launch day, all efforts wasted. You may blame it on the research or blame it to the unexpected changes in trends. Whatever the reason may be, the fact is that failure will hurt.
On the other hand, if you embrace failure and use it as feedback or constructive criticism, your business or your product will transform into something stronger and more worthwhile. You can remove features that aren’t working, are not desirable and not interesting, and then turn your attention and focus toward using resources to improve features that are.
Just remember that experiments, even failed ones, will hold valuable lessons. Don’t try to avoid failures; expect them to happen and be ready to uncover lessons they offer. When failures are fully embraced, you will be well on your way to reaching your success goals.
Detach Yourself From Failure
As we’ve mentioned, failure can be painful, it can be downright heart-wrenching but if you have a strong will, a solid mindset and character to see your failures not as a setbacks but as opportunities, you will always be ready to start over and make things better and more interesting for your customers. It is your perception towards failure that matters most. Be able to draw strength and wisdom from your failures. Feed on the positive energy of failures like successful people do. It will get you pumped up to get over this hump, start over, and get things done right the next time around.
There are young entrepreneurs out there who will just give up without putting up a fight at the first sight of failure. They might place themselves in a state of no return if they are personally affected by failure. Business failure does not equate to personal failure. Know what you want for your business and know what you want for yourself personally, and do not let them get entangled on your way to success.
So, learn to separate the failure from the person, and draw upon its positive energy. It can only make you stronger.
Learn From The Business Failure
It’s normal for people to view failure negatively and view success positively. Failure doesn’t have to be negative if you don’t let it. You can grow and learn from your failures. In business, failure is more common than you might think. Research has shown that 8 out of 10 small businesses will fail. For sure those numbers will make you feel uneasy as an entrepreneur just starting out, but it’s a statistic that’s well worth knowing. Failing isn’t the end of the line for you, it just means you need to take that step in a different direction, and then you’re one step closer to reaching your success goals. Always remember to learn the valuable lessons those failures have to offer along the way. The goal is always to learn and become more successful as an individual and as an entrepreneur.
If you look back through time and the history of the most successful businesses today, it’s difficult to find a success story that doesn’t have a string of now humorous failures behind it. Every single person will experience a failure at some point. The key to getting over this hurdle is to learn from it because this is where your success will start from. This is the point in your life where you can reflect on they ‘whys’ and the ‘hows’ of what led to the failure. Did it come from an internal or external factor? Be responsible for your failures and don’t let uncontrollable factors get you down. Could anything have been done differently to avoid the failure? Just take a while to sit back and think about the situation. Don’t be afraid to do some self-reflection.
There is no success without failure. As you try to reach your success goals, expect to fail along the way. The failure won’t stop you from progressing, but it’s the way you view your failures that may cause you to come crashing down. Have the courage to face the failure head on and always pick up the lessons that it presents.
Once you accept that not every good idea in your head will work out, you’re that much further to reaching your goals. Clear your mind after a failure and figure out what went wrong. Be open to change, and learning, and growing. Success can happen to anyone, just ask yourself how badly you want that success.
Reinvent Yourself
When you’re ready to jump back into the next chapter of your business journey, don’t forget to map out your next steps. Set reasonable goals and create deadlines for each one to keep you on track. Starting over may mean putting out a better product or even as extreme as starting a completely new business. Once you’ve learned from past mistakes, you’ll be ready to make your next venture a success. Identify what made your previous business fail, and take some time to educate yourself in areas of improvement. This will help you avoid making the same mistakes and ensure forward progress into your future.
Do your homework, recall previous experiences, and take a long hard look at your current market. Be better and stronger by determining what will have the best chance of working and what’s best for your business. Create an action plan that includes projections of revenue and profit. Be more thorough and cover all the bases that you may have previously missed. It is also important when starting a new venture that you give it room to steadily grow as you grow as an individual.
Don’t be afraid to start over, because in the end, no matter how well you’ve prepared, it will often involve taking that same leap of faith the first time around. You are taking another chance in hopes the long term success will heavily outweigh the possible failure. Mark Twain once said, “You will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”
Never Give Up
Nobody ever remembers the guy who gave up.
It’s an easy task to enter the area of business when you feel you’ve come up with the next best idea. But once you take that first step, you quickly realize the road to success isn’t going to be as easy as it looked in your head. Building something from scratch is always a big risk as there’s never a guarantee of becoming successful. A business is never a walk in the park. Every successful entrepreneur can tell you about their challenges and failures and then tell you about the hard work and strength they needed to put forth to overcome every single hurdle and obstacle that was put in their way.
Success doesn’t come overnight. Once you’ve accepted this fact, you will not be so easily discouraged from setbacks that are bound to happen. Don’t be personally affected about the negative views of others regarding your business venture, stay focused. No one knows your business better than you. Take the criticism and digest it. If there’s something to learn, take it in and continue moving forward. Don’t let anyone or anything get in the way of your passion.
Without failures, a person could become comfortable and possibly too relaxed running their business and sooner or later their competition will overtake them. Don’t be that person. Welcome competition and be open to trying new things. Ask for help if you have to, especially if your main goal is to quickly recover financially to save the jobs of your employees. If you have no emergency fund, you may have get a loan to fix the problem. This is definitely acceptable as long as it keeps the business moving forward and it is incorporated in your action plan to recover the business.
Know that failure will always be a valuable tool and will give your opportunities to grow stronger as a person and as a business.
