My Story, Part 3 (Final Part) - What if you fail?

I’ve shared with you, in Part 2, three important things for a business I have learnt during my journey these two years. I believe they are applicable to any startups as well. If you become successful in your own journey, well and good. Congratulations! But what if you fail?

Failure is one topic which is not covered in the media. Not many people like to talk about failure, let alone their own failure. Especially in Asia, failure makes you lose face value in society.

What I’m going to share with you now is in fact more important than what I’ve said so far! Why is this so? Because 9 out of 10 entrepreneurs will fail. Let’s all face reality! Instead of only listening to success stories, we must still be prepared for failure and know what to do if we fail.

I’m not going to talk about learning from your own experience – find out why you fail and the strengths and weaknesses you learned about yourself from this experience. Of course, you’re going to do that!

Earlier, I shared three things you need to know when starting a business. I’m now going to share with you the three most crucial things for true success for any entrepreneur. It’s not even about coping with failure because, like I mentioned before, I see entrepreneurship is an attitude, a belief. Once the entrepreneurship bug bites you, you’re not going to let go.

1. When to let go
2. What do you want?
3. What are you doing now to achieve what you want?

When to let go

The first thing to learn is knowing when to let go. When to let go of your baby. When to let go of something you’ve spent so much time, effort, sweat and blood in. When your business is your baby, the most difficult thing to do is to let go. Just like the innate reflex in all parents to protect their child.

But knowing when to let go is important. Because if the signs are there that the business is not working out, due to whatever reasons, for eg. unfavourable market conditions, your finances or your relationship with your business partners, the more you hold on to it, the more damage it will do to you and the more devastated you will be.

In my case, we realized the difficulty of making management decisions and responding quickly to what the market needs, we knew that we could not carry on. While my two other co-founders went back to their careers, I continued to research and watch the online education and internet marketing space and further took ideas from other developments on the net and refined my ideas. I am now happy to say that I am again starting my new venture and am ready to talk to investors.

Knowing when to let go also applies to when times are good. Yes, even when the business is reaching new highs. When the company needs a renewal in leadership, perhaps it’s a cue for you to let go. And I’m sure you know it when the time comes. It is to your best interest and that to the company too. I very much applaud Bill Gates for recognizing this and taking actual steps to reduce his time at Microsoft.

Letting go of something doesn’t mean it’s the end. It just means that you move on to something else, and perhaps something better.

What do you want?

Second, the next good thing about having a failed venture is that you can now spend some time alone to think about what you really want in life. Many people, myself included in the past, don’t really know what they want to do. Not just in business but also in career and relationship.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. What do you really want?

2. How strongly do you want it?

3. By when do you want to achieve it?

4. How much money are you going to put in and how much do you want to earn?

Knowing the specific answers to these questions helps you tremendously in your life and career. Even if you don’t really know what you want, like most people, put something down and continue down the list of questions. The second question confirms to yourself your answer to the first and the third and fourth questions force you to be explicitly specific and targeted about your want that you wrote down. In fact, putting down every want you have and answering down this list of questions, will help you sort out which are your real wants and which aren’t.

I was lost as a sheep before as well! I spent 4 years to know that I really want to do my own business and another two years to decide that the internet is my future and I’m going to build this future I’ve foreseen. And believe me, this is the most difficult thing to do. It is not about making painful decisions, but searching for that gem in the clutter. As the saying goes, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Once you know, it’s a matter of making that step ahead.

I’m not going to stray into motivation stuff, like Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins. You can get that from a lot of books. But I believe that once you are clear about what you want, go ahead and take that first step. Of course it helps if it is a well thought-through step and you have your family and friends to support you in making that decision (not financial support). And like I said earlier, if entrepreneurial is really in your bones, then whatever failures you faced, you know you’re going to do it again.

What are you doing NOW to achieve what you want?

Ok, having now known what you want to do, you need to ask yourself this most important question, “What are you doing NOW to reach that goal?” The key word of this question is NOW. Why now? Because success doesn’t happen overnight! From your first failure to your next project, or when you first decided to start your business, what you do now to prepare for your new venture will determine the success or failure of it.

I can’t stress this enough. I will say it again, “What you do NOW determines your success in the future!”

Let’s use my example again. Only until recently, I decided to put my thoughts in my area of expertise which are online education, building online communities and internet marketing to the world (online). I thought if I’m so good and knowledgeable, shouldn’t people know me? The fact is, I wasn’t thinking this way before. I thought my ideas are great and I shouldn’t share them with the world because someone would copy them.

Well, it’s a chicken and egg problem. Because if I didn’t share what I know, how do I know I’m good? And if I share and others copy it, is it really a concern? If others copy my ideas, it means that the idea is good. But I believe that success comes only with great execution. If I’m good, then I’ll be successful anyway. If other people are good, they’ll be successful too. It’s only a matter of how successful they are.

Now that I know a bit on using open source stuff, my creativity just unleashes itself. I’ve got so much in my head that I start to believe 24 hours a day is not enough for me to get my ideas out! There’s so much I can do now and I’m sure that I will have the recognition that I will earn, not deserved.

Finally, I want to warn everyone about procrastination. Procrastination is the most deadly of all poisons that might strike a person. Procrastination identifies the loser in you very strikingly. Procrastination is a disease of the mind far worse than any terminal diseases in the world. Procrastination is the end of you ever smelling the fruits of success.

I am harsh here and to the point. Because I see and know many people having this dreadful disease. I had it in the past and will not have it again in my life. Are you procrastinating?

Final message

My final message to those of you who’s followed me this far (thanks!) is, “Don’t give up!” Whatever you do, don’t give up. Whatever the odds you face, the barriers blocking you and the financial difficulties that burden you down, don’t give up!

Don’t give up! Because if you do, all the effort you’ve put in and the sweat, the blood and the tears that you’ve spent, would go to waste. You are walking away from what you believed in. Success may be just round the corner, but you’ve now turned the other direction.

Thomas Edison said,

Many of life's failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

I hope you are not the one who walks away from success.

This post concludes my three part series on My Story, which introduces myself to you in a more detailed manner. I very much hope that you have taken something back, think about it, set out an action plan for it, and take actual steps to realize your dreams. If you have, I’m glad for you. And if you want to share your story with me (us), do comment, write about it on your own blog, or just chat to me about it by email or phone.