One of the biggest fears of any new entrepreneur is facing failure. Nobody wants to lose money, crash their business or make a fool of themselves. Unfortunately, there are times where you simply can’t ignore failure and how it can actually benefit you as long as you approach it in the right way.
Should you be aiming to fail?
Absolutely not! Failure is not something that you aim for at any moment in your business’s lifespan. Instead, the point is to actively do things that push your business outside of its comfort zone. Once you establish new boundaries, you can continue to push them and innovate on existing products, services and concepts.
For context, the startup failure percentage is around 90%. This means that only around 10% of startups make it to the next stage as a small or medium business. This could be caused by a number of different things. For starters, it might be a bad business idea, it could be poor management or it could just be the wrong time of the year to start a specific kind of business.
Whatever the situation is, the goal here isn’t to aim to fail. Instead, it’s to not be afraid of failure. It’s to constantly push your business’s boundaries so you discover new things, gather new information and learn more about the industry.
There’s no guide on how to run every kind of business
One of the cold truths about being an entrepreneur and running a business is that there’s no guide to help you. Nobody can hold your hand and nobody will put you on a straight course to success.
For example, people likely aren’t going to tell you that you need DRS Imaging mortgage document management if you’re running a real estate business. Think of it this way; mortgages are generally hundreds of pages and if a company specializes in them, then that’s tens of thousands of documents that they have to organize every day. That’s an incredible amount of paperwork to get through, hence why they need specialized solutions.
But most people don’t know about that. That’s because it’s something highly specific to the real estate industry and not something they just teach you in a book. The point here is that you need to experience challenges in order to find the right solutions. There could be an easy answer to a lot of the problems you’ll face, but you won’t know those problems exist unless you push your business to new heights.
Circumstances will always change
Let’s not forget that business circumstances can always change. You might end up using services you never knew you needed or even existed, and this won’t be immediately obvious until you focus on growing your business.
Just remember that running a company is never a stable and predictable thing. You could start with just a small business idea and turn it into a billion-dollar company, or you could start with a huge amount of capital and hit rock bottom within just two years.
Prepare
If you enquire from experienced entrepreneurs, they will tell you of the things they wish they knew before starting a business. For instance, they can tell you how they should have conducted the right research to prepare for specific setbacks that you are more than likely to go through.
This may include specific risks such as financial, marketing, production, and distribution, to mention a few. Such risks can lead to massive financial losses in the blink of an eye. However, this should not deter you from starting your dream business.
There are various ways to deal with business risks. For instance, you should consider researching them to identify their causes and how to avoid them. Just like how failure is a part of businesses, risks are also a significant part of companies. And accepting this can help you find ways to cope and find better solutions.
Another great way to deal with business risks is by forming partnerships. Partnerships are a great way to share particular risks. If not, when starting a business, you should consider franchising it. But you may wonder how do franchises work to help you mitigate risks.
Franchising your business with an established firm offers all kinds of support needed to avoid specific risks and help your business grow.