How you respond to failure determines your success

Entrepreneurs seldom get it right the first time. But having the ability to keep moving by making adjustments and keeping a healthy mindset improves the odds of success.

My dad invented all kinds of things and he ended up producing one of his ideas, selling it all over the world. Inspired by his guts I tried to take over Hallmark with my greeting card business some years ago.

It was a failure. But instead of bore you with the details of it, I’d much rather share some tips I have picked up over the years about how to move on:

Treat a failure as a learning experience
Without having failed at least once, few entrepreneurs would know the way to success.

Stay loyal to yourself
Instead of taking it personally, use failure to strengthen your commitment. See it as something that happened, not who you are.

Take a step back
Evaluate your business plan and make necessary adjustments based on feedback and results. Sometimes moving past a large obstacle means going around it and not necessarily over it.

Take care of yourself
Set regular times during the week to relax, sosialise and exercise.

Don’t become discouraged
Successful people see failure different from the majority. Copy their attitude of never giving up. Remember: “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

I developed this banner ad while working for McCann, several year ago.

It was a recruitment ad targeting people with IT experience. I had great hopes for it to win a 'proper' creative award but all it got was a nomination. Looking back I don't think it was a bad achievement at all, but at the time I treated it as a failure.
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Thank goodness for the ability to put things into perspective;-)