7 Tricks to Learn From Business Failures

Posted by Karen Erdelac on Feb 12, 2015

Screen_shot_2015-02-25_at_12.26.23_PMInventor Thomas Edison once said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." For every entrepreneur that wants to live out the American Dream, this type of mindset should be embraced and not ignored. It may seem counterintuitive in the business world, but sometimes failing is the key to learning and succeeding.

In other words, why do we fall? To learn to pick ourselves back up. Some may say that it's an inherent skill to welcome failure with open arms and then to deconstruct or reverse engineer those mistakes.

Entrepreneurship is all about taking risks and making investments that others are too scared to make. Some business owners will do their research and avoid the mistakes that their predecessors have made, but for the most part people tend to learn from their own mistakes.

Although it is important to be cautious and wary in the corporate world, there is such a thing as being too cautious. Examples of being too cautious in the business world include an entrepreneur refusing to spend money in order to make money or a business owner refraining from taking on a huge opportunity that could help the brand reach new heights and levels of success.

This year, for example, businesses are investing in social media strategies, mobile marketing and commerce, content marketing, customer service and renovated storefronts. These are the biggest changes that private enterprises are making in order to make the brand more relevant.

Have you considered making these changes?

Here is what the Harvard Business Review wrote about the strategies for learning from mistakes:

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"One challenge is teaching people in an organization when to declare defeat in an experimental course of action. The human tendency to hope for the best and try to avoid failure at all costs gets in the way, and organizational hierarchies exacerbate it."

Here are a few tricks to learn from failures and what to do about it:

  •  Post-mortems
  •   After-action reviews
  •   Make fun of those failures
  •   Never strive for perfection
  •   Welcome customer feedback
  •   Establish a culture of learning
  •   Never give up


Most business ventures require an upfront investment, and savvy business owners know that they need to open the door when opportunity knocks. A low budget doesn't have to stand in the way of expanding your business. A merchant cash advance can help the business grow by covering the short-term expenses, paying for the necessary supplies, employing the array of advanced technologies and investing in new inventory. A merchant cash advance acts an alternative to the various conventional funding options available today.

Do you have a tremendous opportunity waiting for you to act or do you see an untapped development in your market? Well, don't let it pass you by.

Schedule a FREE ROI Assessment

Topics: Growing Your Business