E DITO R ’ S N OTE TRY, FAIL, LEARN — REPEAT! As a student at Southeastern University, something new from their mistakes I remember sitting through many in order to develop a better solution. leadership sessions where the emphasis And many of these respectable business would be on the age-old saying: “Try, owners sit among us here in Lakeland, fail, learn.” Much of my experience as a creating products that better our lives in young leader has followed this sequence, a multitude of ways. although I don’t know if I was really fully Although we cannot erase the prepared for the sting mistakes of our past, we can that followed failure and the motivation choose to learn from them it takes to not only in order to build a stronger move past it, but to foundation moving forward. take away valuable and transformative insight from it. In this issue of The Lakelander, we’re The more I hear about the stories of celebrating the many businesses that put successful businesses, I also hear about themselves out there and risked it for their failures. It seems that it is rare for one something they believed in. Some have to not follow the other. Even businesses done so more than once, only to come like Amazon, Netflix, and Coca-Cola out on the other side with even better have not been immune to the sting of products than before. We commend them failure. Small-business owners risk a lot for their innovation, and we admire them when putting themselves out there in a for their resilience through the process. competitive world where we’re all eager Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “The to solve the next problem and create the greatest glory in living lies not in never most innovative solution. falling, but in rising every time we fall.” Like bigger companies, many small With any great reward comes great risk. businesses have risked, lost, and built Although we cannot erase the mistakes something even greater from their of our past, we can choose to learn failures. It says a lot about those who from them in order to build a stronger can take responsibility, reflect, and learn foundation moving forward.
Annalee Mutz
MANAGING EDITOR
18
TH E L A K E L A N D E R