How To Handle Failure When Things Go Horribly Wrong

I was thinking about my entrepreneurial journey a few days ago and it brought back memories about the first business I started nine years ago!

It was a wedding stationery business and I was designing luxury handmade invitations for high end brides.

Anyway, my first year was a complete disaster!

Looking back, I no longer think of it as a disaster but at that point in time, I felt like a failure!

I spent so much advertising (in all the wrong places) including splurging £3000 on a wedding exhibition in London.

The result?

Zero return!

Yes!… a big fat 0 with a hole in the middle!

That year, I made a huge loss! But I learned A LOT from that experience!

In business, there are times when things don’t work out the way you have planned.

Sometimes, things actually go horribly wrong and it looks like a huge massive failure.

However, I believe that there is no such thing as failure because you can learn something from that ‘failure’ that will help you do better when faced with a similar situation.

And that’s what I learned from that experience of starting my first business.

Although it looked like a failure, I took away some valuable lessons that has stayed with me up till today.

That business went on to become very profitable in the second year and one of the most lessons I took away was to NEVER EVER GIVE UP!

I learned that sometimes in business, you’ve got to rock out the rough months to get to the great months.

Whatever the outcome of a situation, there will be something valuable that you can learn from it.

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So when you think you have failed at something, put on another lens.

Look at it from the perspective of the lessons that you can take away from it.

Any successful entrepreneur will tell you that they have ‘failed’ so many times but the reason why they are successful is because they see their ‘failures’ as feedback.

It’s better to go for something and get feedback or ‘fail’ than wonder ‘what if’.