Learning from failure, is what makes a business successful? I think so, but it is sometimes hard to keep going when things aren’t going your way.

‘Life was never meant to be easy’… I want to kill the person who said that because it goes through my mind when things are not going my way and can derail my progress.

I don’t know how many times I have been down in the dumps and stayed there because of this statement.

Instead, when things are not going as planned I should be looking at it as a learning experience. Being in business is hard there is no doubt about that. But it is even harder when you are trying to achieve goals and things don’t work out as planned. Looking at this as a learning opportunity is hard too because sometimes you can't seem to take a break.

You have to be resilient

I see business people go through hard times but have to be resilient. This is what makes a business successful, being resilient is what keeps you going even when you have failed at something, more importantly, I think it is important to know why you are doing what you do. 

In my last blog, I talked about businesses failing when they run out of cash [Businesses fail when they run out of money]. It can be so demoralising to be in business but not have any money to pay your bills or yourself.

We need to understand that there are many very successful business owners who have had several ventures fail before they finally hit the ground running and succeed.

Successful business people understand there will be bad days and it’s having the ability to pick yourself up quickly and keep going that will make the difference.

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill.

The statistics for business failure in Australia are high, up to 60% in the first three years and of those that fail many are profitable at the time of failure. They fail because they don’t have good systems in place and often lack business financial literacy.

You can't ignore the numbers.

One main problem I see is a business owner trying to be all things to the business, which hinders growth and productivity. Ignoring the numbers is one of the main errors made when a person first starts out, it is so important to ensure you have a system to manage the books and cash flow.

We also see a business with no dispute resolution processes, and customer complaints are often ignored or handled poorly. The thing about this is most people won’t think about this until it is too late.