Every business person, no matter how successful they appear, deals with failure daily. It’s just a part of doing business.
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| Every week, I fail in my business. I never can outguess the customers! |
Looking in from the outside, you don’t see the whole picture. A smart friend told me he’s intimidated when he looks at people he considers successful in business, including me. I started listing off a few of my more notable failures, from personnel to assets, to marketing and advertising.
Every week of the world, I put in my stock order based on my best guess of what people will want to buy for the next week. I’m never completely correct. I get close, but there are always misses and sometimes horrible mistakes. It’s just that no one sees them, except for the hole in the shelf.
But from the outside, you don’t see it that way. You think it’s all planned and precise, when I know that it’s really messy.
My weekly stock ordering failures remind me that failure is a constant in business. If you’re not committing some errors and experiencing some failures, you’re probably not doing anything.
Don’t be afraid of the failures. They are the only way you can learn and grow.
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
I’ve sure been learning lots these past few months, but, because of these mistakes, screw ups and lessens learned the hard way, I feel I am getting closer and closer to success.
Perhaps that is what being an entrepreneur is all about?
Glenda, that’s pretty much how it works.
Becky–
Are you familiar with the concept of safety stock? It’s pretty easy to calculate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_stock#Example_calculation
It’ll allow you to make a *new* mistake next week! :-)
Jason, that’s a helpful calculation, and one we use, in a very simplified form. That helps us minimize our outages. Like everything else meaningful, it requires balance.
With an ever-changing selection of over a thousand items, I make errors every single week. That will never change, even as I get better and better.
This is so true. Outside views can be so wrong. What I learned from similar thoughts last year is that we all have those areas where we make mistakes and it is perfectly OK to address those when talking to others. Not only will it be a relieve for you and take a lot of pressure off you. It will do the same for the other as well. Don’t we all at first think that we are in this alone when we are really not?
Philipp, this is exactly why I talk about failure.
I’ve made plenty of mistakes over the last 5 years running my business. It’s a part of life. The best thing to remember is to not dwell on the mistake too long…just learn from it and move forward.