Failure is an important stepping stone to success

Failure is an important stepping stone to success

What do people like Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs and JK Rowling have in common? All these are people who perfect extremely well in

their respective experienced.

fields

despite

the

challenges

they

One common thing among these people is that they first experienced different levels of failure before attaining great levels of success in their respective areas. Some of them were fired from their jobs, lost large amounts of money and often dealt with const5ant rejections.

I get discouraged but I still press on In most cases, it is not about what we experience in life but our response to whatever challenges come our way. I had a personal experience that helped me appreciate this lesson back in 2008 after discovering something shocking. My business partner robbed our company of more than $500,000 by evading tax. I came to realize the fraudulent activity when it was too late.

He took the money to try and rescue his failing business but later went bankrupt. I found myself in a very difficult situation – a huge debt of $750 after penalties and interest.

You can imagine what was running through my mind at that moment. There were only two options for me: To repay the debt or declare bankruptcy.

Since it was my business, there was nothing much I could do other than find ways of repaying the debt. We decided to sell our family home with my wife and did everything in our power to clear the debt. It was not an easy time for our family. It was the same time the world was

experiencing an economic crisis and we really got hit financially.

In early 2015, I managed to raise equity funding from one of our ventures. That IT startup company launched in 2006 is one of the largest in Australia. Collaboration with local business networking groups has also helped us get to where were are today.

It will not be a failure if you manage to learn from it There’s no one who likes to fail. But we need to accept the risk of failing if we are to succeed. Failing in itself is not bad but failing to learn from it is the greatest mistake one can make. There’s a lot one can learn from local business networking groups.

It is also crucial to ensure that your team understands the process of reviewing failure. They should not see it as a process of fault-finding but rather a learning opportunity.

Working with local business networking groups can help team members appreciate the fact that failure is part of success.

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