What is it that really makes a person succeed as an entrepreneur? Many people say its luck, others say it’s the network one has and connections or having money to start with. Speak to many entrepreneurs and they will all likely say a combination of these. But the truth is that you can’t really control these things. And none of them in isolation nor together can guarantee success. How many people do you know who have money or the connections who are not successful as business owners and entrepreneurs?

What you can control however is yourself and what goes on in your mind. My father used to tell me, you can be successful at anything….and if you are not, the problem is probably you. This is a hard truth that many entrepreneurs cannot see past. While there are many reasons that a business can suffer, its ultimate failure or success boils down to how you react to these causes and deal with the effects.

When people say my business failed because the market was not right, or my pricing was incorrect I always say that that is an incorrect assessment of what went wrong. The real reason your business failed is that you were incapable of seeing that your price was wrong and that the market was moving in a different direction.

At the core of business success or failure is the person faced with the situation and their ability to react positively or negatively to the challenges they face. The real difference between success and failure is the mindset of this person.

This then begs the question, can you set your mindset for success as opposed to failure? The simple answer is YES. I’ve worked with many entrepreneurs and have seen what it takes to succeed and why people fail. And anyone can be trained to succeed.

Succeeding as an entrepreneur is about having the right mindset. It’s about cultivating a set of practices and behaviours that can lead to success. If you can control your mind, focus on what is important and develop the ability to deal with the problems that you face daily, you will never really fail. This is a learnable skill and in the High Performing Business Roadmap we go through a process that has been designed to help you build this winning mindset.

Failure for an entrepreneur cannot be viewed as event specific nor in the short term

In the traditional sense, I have failed many times. I have had many businesses close down; many more than have actually succeeded. But I have never really seen these as failures. Failure for entrepreneurs must not be seen as event specific and must be viewed in the long term. Failure is not an inability to sell a particular product or market a particular service. Failure is not about closing down a business because you could not make it profitable. These types of failures are very short term and event specific. This type of failure is just experiential learning and as I am sure you have heard a thousand times; you must embrace this type of failure in order to progress. It is part and parcel of being an entrepreneur.

Failure in business is actually an inability to react to the circumstances that you will face in running a business. By react I mean to be able to understand why something is not working and to be able to plot a path to overcome whatever obstacle lies in your path. And then taking the necessary corrective action and iterating the react part till you get to a situation that you are comfortable with. It is a result of a lack of awareness of your circumstance and the resulting inability to pivot whatever it is that you are trying to do, in order to turn around your situation and achieve your overriding goal of running a successful high performing business. Failure is not putting the required effort into really exploring all possibilities until you reach your goal.

Learn from failure but don’t lament on the past.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

Henry Ford

You have to learn from failure in the short term in order for it to make a positive impact in the long term. To do this, I keep a failure log where I write down things that didn’t work in the various businesses or situations that I face. I highlight the important ones and refer back to this log periodically. I discuss the things that did not work with my team on a weekly basis during our weekly wrap up meeting on Friday afternoons and we make sure not to repeat the mistakes that we made.

Now while it’s important to take learnings away from things that didn’t work, it’s just as important to remind yourself to move on from those things. It’s very natural to lament on the past and let it block your path forward. So, we make it a point to discuss the failings, take the learning points away and move on.

You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.

Johnny Cash

Once you understand what failure is and isn’t for an entrepreneur, it’s time to turn to success. How do you ensure success? In the next post we will discuss The Winning Mindset formula. Stay tuned.

If you want more information on The Winning Mindset just reach out to us via email on enquiry@thebusinesscollective.sg.