The good news is that this unprecedented power frees you to organize your work however you’d like. The bad news is that it gives you ample opportunity to screw around. The choice of how you work best is entirely up to you. Some people prefer to plan out every waking hour extensively. Some like to make lists of tasks to accomplish. Some like to focus on one task at a time. Others like to switch rapidly between tasks. Some of you are morning people, and some like burning the midnight oil. Any regimen that works for you can be effective. The trick is to know when you’re being effective and when you’re wasting time and energy on nonproductive tasks. If you’re not accomplishing what you’re setting out to do during the day, you’re either setting unrealistic expectations or you need a new system.
What If I Fail?
A fear of failure is natural for many first-time entrepreneurs, but successful entrepreneurs think about failure in an entirely different way. To them, failure is not only a part of the process of starting and growing a new business, but it is also an important marker signifying growth and movement. Part of this perspective shift comes from the inherent optimism that all entrepreneurs share, but a mindset that embraces failure is a realistic and holistic look at what it means to find success starting your own business.
It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because all that matters in business is that you get it right once.
– MARK CUBAN
The best way to understand failure in the context of your own business is to operate under the assumption that you will fail. Failure in some capacity is guaranteed when entering uncharted territory. If failure is guaranteed, then that means the way you handle failure becomes the most important element of your entrepreneurial success. Pick any successful business today that started out as a startup. The founding team of that business met numerous failures, but today the business is alive and well. Where would that business be today if those founders had seen failure as a dead end?
Failure is an inevitability of the testing and experimentation process. For entrepreneurs who are starting out, a large portion of what they do is experimentation. If an entrepreneur doesn’t experiment with a new way of doing things, how can the business grow? In this way, failure is not a dead end, but an indicator that growth and learning are taking place.
The way in which a person views failure is a mindset, not a personality trait. Personality traits can be difficult to change, but you are in complete control over your own mindset. Don’t be paralyzed by a fear of what people will think. Failures are the learning tools through which we reach successes.
Within the entrepreneurial world, failure is the means by which businesses find their way. Harnessing this concept as a driver of innovation and growth can seem difficult at first, but it can be developed through key activities.
Change your mindsetWelcome failure as a learning opportunity, and try to fail fast so as to not waste time chasing a poor business model. The faster you can put inevitable failures behind you, the faster you will be along the path toward success.
Be ready to pivot rapidlyFailing just for the sake of failing won’t get you anywhere. When you reach the realization that the current course isn’t working, be ready to pivot. Understanding failure as a learning tool means that flexibility is important. Don’t cling to an original idea, especially in the face of evidence that it isn’t the best course of action. It’s better to “fail fast” than continue on a course that’s not working.
Experiment constantlyConstantly experiment with new ideas and initiatives but realize that many aren’t going to work out. Try to inject a healthy dose of natural curiosity about new ideas into the way you think about your business, and the good ones will morph into opportunities.
In practice, this set of activities changes the path to success from the straight line that many people envision to the branching and divergent path that is a more accurate representation of the journey to success that you will encounter. The twisting path pictured is a visual representation of the entrepreneurial mindset and its relationship to failure. In short, each point of failure along the way is an opportunity to pivot toward a new path to success.
Risk and the Entrepreneurial Mindset
Starting your own venture obviously carries a considerable amount of risk. Embracing failure and aiming to fail fast does not mean being reckless with risk. Instead, it means understanding and accepting risk as an inherent quality related to starting your own business and managing that risk by improving your odds.
Think of risk in these ways:
Entrepreneurs interpret the risk vs. reward calculation differently.No one who is starting their own business believes that their actions aren’t risky compared to choosing another path. What they do believe, however, is that the reward justifies the increased levels of assumed risk.
The entrepreneurial mindset changes a person’s perception of risk.When failure is seen as a steppingstone and the path to success is understood to be nonlinear, an individual’s perception of risk changes dramatically. Compare that mindset with someone who sees failure as a dead end, or any path to success that is not a straight line as invalid.
Calculating risk based on a massive reward, perceiving risk through the lens of failure as an opportunity, and being comfortable with risk all differentiate an entrepreneur from a speculator or a gambler. In this way, risk can be seen less as static odds and more as a condition that can be influenced.
The Role of Luck
Many entrepreneurs scoff at the notion of luck, preferring rugged slogans like “I make my own luck,” “the harder I work, the luckier I get,” or “luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” Despite this self-made motif, self-reflective entrepreneurs will often readily acknowledge that luck has had a profound role in their success. I will say this about luck—you’re much more likely to find it if you’re out there trying to make things happen rather than passively waiting for fortune to smile down upon you.
That being said, if you scratch a little below the surface of any entrepreneurial success story, chances are you will find some sort of chance meeting, lucky break, great timing, etc., that just can’t be explained as anything else but luck. Sometimes it’s hard to sift out the “luck” because successful entrepreneurs and the adoring financial press that follow them have no incentive to admit to any sort of good fortune, and every reason to imply that every good thing that happened to them was the result of their intelligence, hard work, and careful planning.
Like many nascent entrepreneurs, you probably like to read stories about successful entrepreneurs as a form of motivation, but the stories you read are often hopelessly skewed and self-serving. They are, in the words of Rudyard Kipling,