 Image credit: Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels No one ever said being an entrepreneur would be easy, and for many people, failure is just a part of the journey. In fact, according to Forbes, around 90% of all startups fail. So if you're an entrepreneur who has experienced failure, know that you are not alone. This blog post will discuss some ways to handle failure as an entrepreneur.
#1 Accept it First and foremost, it is important to accept failure. This may seem like an obvious statement, but in order to move on from failure, you must first accept that it has happened. Denial will only make the situation worse and make it harder to learn from your mistakes. So how do you accept failure? An excellent way to start is by taking some time to reflect on what went wrong. Once you have identified what went wrong, you can begin to develop a plan for how to avoid making the same mistake again in the future. #2 Learn from it One of the best ways to handle failure is to learn from it. As mentioned above, taking some time to reflect on what went wrong can be helpful in this process. But learning from failure goes beyond just understanding what went wrong; it also involves understanding why it went wrong. For example, let's say you launch a new product, and it fails miserably. In order to learn from this experience, you need to understand not only that the product was unsuccessful but also why it was unsuccessful. Was there a problem with the product itself? Was the marketing campaign ineffective? Did you misjudge the target market? Once you have answered these questions, you can begin to develop a plan for how to avoid making similar mistakes in the future. There are many ways to learn from failure, but one of the most important things to remember is that failure is not permanent. Just because a venture has failed does not mean that you have failed as an entrepreneur. It is crucial to pick yourself up and try again. If you are finding it difficult to motivate yourself to keep going through the failures or to find the lessons to be learnt consider hiring the help and services of a business coach. Award winning business coach Peter Boolkah emphasises that business coaching is all about you, the business owner, and how you manage, run and react to your business. Business coaching can help you develop and improve in such a way that your business will reap the rewards. It will give you a means of accountability to put those mistakes to good use and learn from them going forward. Business coaching could be just the drive to turn your mistakes into opportunity. So don’t let those mistakes go to waste. #3 Use it as motivation Another way to handle failure is to use it as motivation. When you have experienced a setback, it can be easy to feel like giving up. But if you use your experience of failure as motivation, it can be a powerful tool for helping you achieve success - Krissy Jones’s story is a great example! Think about what you want to achieve and let that be your driving force. Use your experience of failure to remind yourself why you are doing what you are doing and what you are working towards. Let it motivate you to keep going even when things are tough. #4 Don't dwell on it Finally, it is vital to not dwell on your failures. Yes, it is important to learn from your mistakes, but dwelling on them will only make things worse. Once you have accepted and learned from your failures, it is time to move on. Focus on the future and what you can do to achieve success. Use your experience of failure as a lesson and a reminder of what not to do in the future. But don't let it hold you back from moving forward and achieving your goals. Failure is a part of being an entrepreneur, but it doesn't have to define you. By following the tips above, you can learn how to handle failure in a healthy and productive way.
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 Image credit: mhouge from Pixabay With so many big decisions to be made as a leader, you may think that being an entrepreneur is all about the skills that are learned over the years but being an entrepreneur, in many ways, is more than just learning a bunch of information to implement but it's about making sure that you have the right characteristics. Even if you think that you don't have what it takes to be an entrepreneur, it's worth considering these components.
Understanding You Are Not the Cleverest Person in the Room (and This Is Okay) One of the big misnomers of being a leader is believing that in order to be in charge of a group of people, you've got to be more intelligent than all of them combined. The reality is that you should not be the cleverest person in the room by a longshot! Being a great leader or entrepreneur is about utilising the skills of other workers and understanding how they all slot together. You may believe that you need to be supremely skilled in every single area, but the fact is that your goal is to address the big picture. So many businesses outsource these days, and it's about understanding that whether you need to take advantage of small business accounting online, or you are looking for bloggers or graphic designers, you have to ensure that what everybody does seals your vision in place. Accepting That You Need to Keep Learning Becoming a successful leader is a learning curve. No one can know everything, and part of being a leader is to understand that and to be willing to keep learning. Being in charge of a business is a highly responsible job, and it is likely that you will need to understand the rules and regulations that govern your industry. That is a lot of information to take on board, so continually refreshing your knowledge is an essential task. If you run a construction company, no one is expecting you to know the timber roof standard regulations without ever reading them; instead, this kind of knowledge is something that you will need to learn along the way. So, the key lesson is not to be hard on yourself and to accept that there will always be new things to learn as a business leader. Why Your Personality Is Pivotal The most important piece of the puzzle, in order to be an effective entrepreneur, is to be the best version of yourself possible. Every leader knows they need to have the right skills like communication and soft skills, but one of the biggest oversights many entrepreneurs make is thinking that they need to just learn all of these skills and they can automatically lead the company and their people to greatness. But the fact is you've got to understand who you are in order to bring all of these skills out in the right ways. This is why you cannot completely neglect your personality in the process. A lot of people think that if they want to be a leader, but don't have what it takes right now, they have got to completely draw a line in the sand and start again. The reality is that you have an abundance of resources at your disposal and you will always use your perspective of the situation to fuel your decision-making. So rather than thinking you are not capable and need to build a whole new personality, being a leader is not just about the skills. The fact is that we can all learn skills but we need to apply them through our own unique prism. An entrepreneur is someone who doesn't just need to have sales acumen or the ability to delegate, but the fact is that your personality is the missing link between learning all of the skills that are so essential and leading a group of individuals to success.  Image credit: Thabang Madnsela on Unsplash In an age where the average attention span is thought to be worse than that of a goldfish, doing nothing could be the secret to happiness (and success). Never have those two little words “I’m bored” been uttered so much by all ages than in 2020. The Sun has more on why boredom could be the key to success...
 Image credit: Jason Yuen on Unsplash Every Christmas, Ryohei Ando gathers his family together for a holiday tradition. Just like their father did as a child, his two children will reach deep into a red-and-white bucket and pick out the best piece of fried chicken they can find.
Yes, it’s a Merry KFC Christmas for the Ando family. It may seem odd anywhere outside Japan, but Ando’s family and millions of others would never let a Christmas go by without Kentucky Fried Chicken. Every Christmas season an estimated 3.6 million Japanese families treat themselves to fried chicken from the American fast-food chain, in what has become a nationwide tradition. You can read about this KFC Christmas event over at BBC.com!  Image credit: Gundula Vogel on Pixabay We all have to live in this world that runs on money and, for as long as that is true, that means that we do need to take our money management seriously. However, there are a lot of people to whom any potential financial issues, even small ones, can become a heavy weight that can drag them down, paralyse them, and prevent them from chasing what they want, whether it’s to invest in a business, buy assets, or otherwise. If your financial anxiety is dragging you down, it’s time to think about why that is and see what you can do to let that weight go. Get to know where you’re really at If you feel like you’re constantly on the back foot when it comes to your finances, it can help to gain a little perspective. Indeed, you might be right that, for instance, you owe more than you own. But you won’t know and thus you won’t be able to accurately implement any solutions until you get an actual idea of the situation. Put a list of all of your assets together, all accounts owed to you, and any debt you owe. Subtract the debt from the assets and money owed to you in order to get your net worth at the current time. Make some plans for the future Anxiety is mostly a sense of fearing the worst possible outcome when it comes to the future. These outcomes in your head are rarely based on real logic but more a kind of fear. However, that doesn’t mean that common sense solutions can’t help you dispel them. If you’re worried about being destitute in the far future, then make it a priority to put together some retirement savings as soon as you can. Put together annual savings goals after figuring out how much you need to put aside each year for a healthy retirement, and stick to those financial goals as well as you can. Don’t forget to budget By far one of the most useful pieces of financial advice that anyone can ever offer you, and one that can transform how you look at your money situation, is to put together a budget. A budget effectively looks at how much money you have to spend in any given period of time and helps you find out where you should be spending it. For instance, the 50/30/20 budget involves putting aside 50% of your money ahead of time to pay for the essentials, such as your home, groceries, bills, and so on. 30% of that is for discretionary purchases, such as new clothes, nights out, entertainment and so on, and 20% is for financial planning, such as saving towards emergency funds or investing. You don’t have to follow that specific example, but having a set plan for where your money is going and then ensuring your money does just that can offer a sense of security. Searching for those discounts and savings is a great way many people can help their budget spending. Couponing websites can help customers find coupons for retailers such as Kohls and many others. Websites that offer home improvement coupons (see this website as one example) help you to make big savings on your next purchase!  Image credit: Chris Pastrick on Pixabay Start building from scratch again You might be feeling a little low because a recent cost, such as a car repair, home repair, or major bill has knocked your finances for six. Your savings might have had to have been recently emptied, setting you back more than a few steps in your future plans. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s all pointless. There’s a good chance your situation would have been worse had you not had those savings to rely on. It’s time to pick yourself back up again after life knocks you down and get started with your savings once more. So long as you are a step in the right direction next week compared to where you are now, you are doing your financial health a world of good. Don’t get paralysed by debt A lot of us owe some sort of debt or have done in the past. When your debt is at its highest point, then it can feel almost pointless to think about what life would be like without it. However, the only bad decision to make when facing more debt than you can currently pay is to ignore it. You could get in touch with your creditors to talk about repayment plans and let them know about your situation. You can also look to other solutions, like debt consolidation that can make it easier to pay off the sum of what you know. However, the longer you wait, the more your debt will build. Take the time to research your options, but don’t put off the situation. Put some protections in place In future, you want to prevent yourself for having to raid your savings or to fall in debt. There’s no way to prepare for absolutely everything the future might through your way, but investing in a few protections can do you a world of good. Informally, having an emergency savings fund could help, but in a more formal sense, you should take a look at what kind of insurance you might need to protect your current lifestyle and assets.  Image credit: Jan Vašek on Pixabay Address your habits
Do you have some bad financial habits that either fuel or are caused by your financial anxiety? If so, they can keep you from building the financial protections that can serve as a long-term cure. There are a host of habits that can be destructive to your sense of money security. Overspending is an obvious one, but cost-tracking apps can help you identify cases of overspending so that you’re less likely to do it again. Excessive frugality and hoarding can be just as financially unhealthy since they often involve sitting on money that could do more good if you’re saving it for a specific goal or using it to pay for some manner of security. Take a close look at your financial habits are and learn which ones you should curb. Being conscious of your finances is all well and good, but if it’s getting to the point that it’s stopping you from taking action, it’s time to rethink your money situation. Hopefully, the tips above help with that.  Image credit: Hive Boxx on Unsplash How do you know you've reached a turning point in your life? How can you recognise that maybe you need a change? Entrepreneur Europe has 5 signs for you...
 Image credit: geralt on Pixabay Developing a new product is the cornerstone of any successful business, especially startups. You need to create something that meets the needs of consumers while also turning over a healthy profit for you. Getting to that point, however, can be a challenge. Building a product isn’t just a matter of getting out there and doing the work - it requires time and patience to get right. The failure rate for new products and services is notoriously high. In some quarters, it is north of 90 percent, meaning that that majority of new products on the market fail. So what’s the key here? How can you nail your product development cycle and deliver something that will generate substantial profits? Start By Satisfying A Need New products don’t just emerge out of the ether - they come from the fact that they solve problems that consumers have. We already have a highly sophisticated economy, churning out millions of different goods each year for these needs. So there is a lot of knowledge already about what customers want. The market is already excellent at determining their needs and satisfying them. Any new product, therefore, needs to fit into this context. It must understand how the market is currently failing consumers and how the new product can compete. And it needs to improve on whatever is already out there in some way. The most successful products, therefore, aren’t always something entirely novel. Instead, they find a way to improve on an existing formula while preserving their competitive advantage. Find Out How Much The Opportunity Is Worth You might have an excellent idea for a niche product, but if the market for it is small, you might not make a return on your original investment. Ideally, you want to figure out which market segments are most likely to consume whatever you build. Then you need to determine whether you will generate sufficient revenue for it to be worth your time.  Image credit: Mohamed _hassan on Pixabay User research platform, Userzoom, says that companies should try to understand the needs of users before building a new product or service and then validate prototypes. This approach helps to reduce risks and ensure that there is a feasible market out, therefore, for the products when you finally decide to scale.
Working out the size of the opportunity is, therefore, vital. You might have a product that a particular niche wants, but if there are too few people, you’ll ultimately wind up out of pocket. Figure Out How You Will Develop The Product The best way to work out how to develop a product is to look at how the market operates already. Look at the methods that companies already use to ship new goods and services to their customers and actually make it happen. Ask yourself the following questions:
Test Your Prototype In As Many Ways As You Can Prototypes are an essential stage in producing a successful product. They are the point where you find out whether you will be able to deliver something the market will accept or not. Companies tend, however, to look at their products through rose-tinted glasses. They see them as to how they want to see them, rather than how actual customers will. Regular people are the harshest critics of what you sell. If there’s a slight weakness or flaw, they’ll find it and let you know in online reviews. Prototyping, therefore, is your opportunity to wipe out as many of these concerns as possible. Be brutal with your product. Test it to its limits. If you find a flaw, plot a course of action to fix it. Ask yourself whether the product is robust enough, fast enough, or sufficiently flexible. Be honest with yourself about whether it offers customers enough features, or if there are too many. Also, question whether you can deliver it to the market on time. Many companies work to strict time constraints. There is a window of opportunity that they must exploit if they want their enterprise to thrive. If they miss it, then the profit opportunity will vanish. A prototype, therefore, could have all the bells and whistles imaginable. Still, if it is going to take years to bring to scale, then it is not fulfilling the needs of the business. Long development cycles are often what kills new companies. The chance for the product to shine passes. Figure Out How To Position The Product Once you’ve designed the product and studied your market thoroughly, the next step is to position it ready for launch. Companies need to have a good sense of where their product fits alongside the other options available in the marketplace. Positioning the product is essential and usually requires some pretty savvy marketing. For instance, is your product designed for a premium audience? Or are you looking to target people on a budget? Does your product offer superior technology than its competitors? Or does it do the same thing, but at a lower price? Finally, how will you use your brand image to sell the product? Will you use a value-driven approach where you talk about the broader benefits of your product? Or will you tap into different customer philosophies? Remember, your advertising doesn’t have to focus on product features. Instead, you can simply focus on how your company makes people feel. Coca-Cola, for instance, doesn’t talk about the high sugar content of its drinks. Instead, it just associates its brand with having a good time.  You can post as much inspirational and motivational stuff as you can but sometimes, taking a look into what the real world looks like for someone that dedicates their day to being the best they can will have a bigger impact. Mark Wahlberg revealed his daily routine back in December 2018, this followed after Wahlberg was named the highest paid Hollywood actor in 2017. BBC News had the story back then..
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Author - Chris
Author, Editor, Creator of Learn Develop Live Archives
November 2022
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