5 Ways To Learn From The Mistakes You Make As An Entrepreneur

None of us look forward to making our next mistake, but we all know that mistakes are all part of the journey. In this post, I share with you 6 ways to learn from the mistakes you make as an entrepreneur.

Many of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world are masters at learning from their successes and failures. They tend to be especially good at finding the reasons for their failures and ensuring they don’t repeat them. The majority of professionals and entrepreneurs are not particularly interested in reliving their mistakes or even diagnostically consider their successes. Nevertheless, when you systematically examine what went right and what went wrong in various business situations, you’ll be able to learn career-advancing solutions.

Most successful entrepreneurs usually have a litany of stories about bad business decisions, bad investments, choosing to work with the wrong people and so many other valuable lessons along the way. It appears that failure is inevitable. The key to success is what you make of your failures.

Here are 5 ways to learn from the mistakes you make as an entrepreneur:

1. Stop The Impulse To Blame

We’re taught in school and society that mistakes and failures are shameful things and we should avoid them at all costs. Our entire educational landscape tells kids that there’s just one right answer and it’s never good to be wrong. With this background, it’s no surprise that our natural instinct is to try to justify our actions or blame someone else for the situation.

The problem is that as soon as you start blaming other people or outside circumstances, you completely spoil any chance of learning from the mistake. The first step is to move away from assigning blame and have the courage to stand up and say, “this is my mistake and I own it.” The learning process begins the minute you start taking responsibility.

2. Know It’s OK To Fail

Yes, it’s OK to fail and commit mistakes. The adage we learn from failure is true. Be open with your mind, eyes and ears. The lessons are there for you to understand and to do better next time. Think about what you have done right, what you can do better and what you should stop doing. That is one of the easiest ways to analyze how to learn from failure and not commit the same mistakes again.

3. Reevaluate Your Planning

How much time did you spend planning the best way to achieve your goal or task before you started? How much thought did you give to anticipating hurdles or problems that might arise and to figure out how you would handle them if they did? The vast majority of us spend little if any time on this kind of planning, despite the likelihood of our running into obstacles and unexpected circumstances. In the future, make sure to plan your general strategy, consider potential setbacks and figure out how to overcome them before you ever begin.

4. Keep Going 

Above all, the lesson you learn from your mistakes is that you can survive a mistake and keep growing. Dealing with failure and other letdowns is a big part of your journey. Overcoming adversity is a theme in every heroic story we’ve ever heard or read. Getting knocked down and getting up again is not only part of life, but it’s how we learn to roll with the changes life throws at us.

5. Learn The Bigger Lesson

Across multiple unsuccessful initiatives, you can determine different ways of thinking, habitual actions and repeated poor judgments. From here you can discern the bigger lessons you need to master in order to ensure you only make new mistakes. Whenever you make a mistake, focus on learning the bigger lesson behind why things didn’t go as planned.

Conclusion

None of us look forward to making our next mistake, but we all know that mistakes are all part of the journey. In this post, I shared with you 6 ways to learn from the mistakes you make as an entrepreneur. If you are looking for a bit of inspiration, check out 300+ Top Inspirational Quotes & Quote Pictures.

7 Strategies For Bouncing Back When You Make A Business Mistake

In this post, I share with you 7 strategies for bouncing back when you make a business mistake. No one likes to fail or make mistakes, but success in business depends on how you bounce back from tough times.

Nobody wants to fail, but even the brightest and most successful people have faced failure at some point in their careers. Life is a constant see-saw. Most of us teeter between our achievements and our mistakes.

Some mistakes are greater than others. Blowing a vital presentation, missing a big sale or losing out on a business opportunity certainly stings, but you know you’ll be able to bounce back. Then, there are times where you may have missed something even bigger. Your mistakes threaten to crush everything you’ve worked so hard to build. Then what?

Whatever you do, don’t lock yourself into despair. Everyone falls short from time to time, so your ultimate test is how you deal with failure. Pity and self-loathing won’t fix anything, neither will pretending as if nothing happened. Entrepreneurs are expected to hit the shot out of the park each time and if that doesn’t happen, you’re going to face a bit of a tough time.

Here are 7 strategies for bouncing back when you make a business mistake:

1. Evaluate Your Company Culture

It’s easy to overlook the role your company culture plays when it comes to success, but a positive culture will lead to much better results, less employee turnover and increased revenue. If your employees are happy, they’ll handle challenging problems faster and even outperform their peers by 20 percent.

Consider ways to improve the culture at your company, such as more open communication and asking for your employees’ opinions and ideas. By making a few small changes to your workplace culture, you can make a big impact on your bottom line.

2. Accept That Making Mistakes Is Part of Life

Embrace your mistake. Don’t try to hide it. Failures don’t somehow work themselves out. They take work, so ignoring the problem only digs a deeper pit. Remember that mistakes are fundamentally part of the human condition. Some degree of making mistakes is inevitable every time we step outside our comfort zone.

Many of the most successful people throughout history had significant mistakes and failures as well as excellent accomplishments. What sets them apart is how they channeled that failure into something positive. As long as you can accept and embrace your mistakes, you’ll be able to bounce back and do just fine.

3. Look For A Positive Outcome

Mistakes are going to happen, but we cannot live life in fear of mistakes. When mistakes do happen, it’s important to think about why that mistake happened and to learn how to avoid making it again. It’s also important to find the positive outcome that came from making that mistake. Bouncing back is hard, but you bounce back with more experience and more intelligence than before.

4. Own Your Mistake

If you’ve been honest about your misstep and learned from the experience, it’s still critically important to take ownership of the situation. Taking responsibility for your mistakes is key to showing others you are an accountable individual who lives with integrity. It might seem counter-intuitive, but putting your mistakes front and center will help restore others’ confidence in you. In turn, this will enable you to regain support as you try again.

5. Get Rid Of Underperforming Products & Services

It’s never easy to abandon products and services that you’ve spent time creating and marketing. Just like you need to purge yourself of your previous business plans, you also need to eliminate anything that’s underperforming.

When you continue to provide these products, they only distract from your real moneymakers and take up time you could use for development. Set a hard line regarding profitability and cut anything that doesn’t reach it.

6. Make Sure It Doesn’t Happen Again

The worst mistake in business and in life is the one that you’re repeating. Don’t repeat the same mistake twice; make sure to not only learn from your mistakes but to implement processes and have discussions with your team to ensure they don’t happen again. Also, don’t dwell on it; we all make mistakes. Positive thinking goes a long way.

7. Take Action & Move On

This step is the biggest test to see if you can rebound from your failures. What solutions do you have to rectify the problem? How can you offset the situation to avoid or lessen harm to others? How do you get things back on track?

Deal with your mistake head on and then advance to the next thing. Start your next project, look at new ventures or consider a new task at hand. Remember your hard-learned lessons as you keep moving forward and you’ll emerge stronger and far more resilient than before.

Conclusion

No one likes to fail or make mistakes, but success in business depends on how you bounce back from tough times. When you learn from your business failures and move forward with your newfound knowledge, you’ll have the right tools to improve your startup and find long-term success. In this post, I shared with you 7 strategies for bouncing back when you make a business mistake.