Learn business success skills from the ashes of your failure

A stressed out businessman. An entrepreneur can triumph over a business failure and rise to start another venture. PHOTO | FILE 

By MURORI KIUNGA

In Summary

• Though not a prerequisite for success, failure is an indispensable part of it.

Failure is a reality many people hardly plan for when venturing into business. Even with the best plans in place, all resources assembled, and due diligence in all actions; still failure is highly probable in every business.

Various studies and available data reveal that most businesses fail within the first few years of being set up, and the reasons for failure may have nothing to do with the actions or inaction of the entrepreneur.

It could be a result of unforeseen factors such as disaster, loss of huge sums of money, rapid shift in customer preference, activities of a competitor or emergence of substitute products in the market, or bad luck.

Failure may kill a business but it cannot kill a business person. I always say that entrepreneurs don’t fail; it is enterprises that fail.

An entrepreneur can triumph over a business failure and rise to start another venture. Though not a prerequisite for success, failure is an indispensable part of it.

Almost all successful entrepreneurs have encountered setbacks and even failure on their journey to success. In most cases their success is defined and polished by those failures. In fact, some of them had to completely change business lines.

This means that ability to cope with and conquer failure is an important trait of entrepreneurs. Resilience after defeat is no doubt one of the most valuable skills every entrepreneur should have.

Fortunately, resilience and ability to cope with failure is a skill that can be learned and mastered.

There are three key steps in dealing with failure. I call them the 3As of overcoming failure. The first step is accepting.

Failure brings loss. It could be loss of money, market share, key employee or even entire business.

Once misfortunes hit your firm accept and move on. Wailing and groaning over lost deals, money and opportunities is like crying over spilt milk.

Once you have accepted that it has happened and it cannot be reversed, you are able to go to the next important step — which is adjustment.

This step is important because disappointments can alter your lifestyle. Life is never the same after a loss. You may have to continue, for example, paying loans and other liabilities for a business that flopped.

You may have to change to a lifestyle you can afford and do things differently, not necessarily for better but to survive.
Yet without adjusting your life, it is impossible to move to the next step, which is advancement.

Nothing kills entrepreneurs faster than failure to adjust when their enterprise collapses. Failure to adjust is a key impediment to advancement.

You can only start advancing in life when you accept that the worst has happened, you adjust your life accordingly, knowing that life must continue.

Living in denial, or pretending that all is well, only compounds the problem and hinders advancement. djustment is to entrepreneurs what tactical retreat is to soldiers facing an infallible adversary.

It calls for humility to start small and grow rather than interpret setbacks to mean you are a total failure.

Advancement starts by learning the lessons of failure and initiating a new beginning. It starts the moment you realise that past challenges are not an indicator of future failure and you gather courage to start all over again with zeal and enthusiasm.

Mr Kiunga is a business trainer and the author of The Art of Entrepreneurship: Strategies to Succeed in a Competitive Market. Murorikiunga@yahoo.com