If there is one thing that I wish entrepreneurs would talk about in their journeys is failure. And not in the romantic sense where they describe failure as a learning curve. Not in the motivational sense that if you fall, you should pick yourself up again. I wish they would describe in detail the emotions that they felt when they failed. And this post will detail why I think they should talk about their failures.
It is said that 5 out of 7 SMMEs will fail in South Africa. That is little over 70% of SMMEs that will fail. That is a high number and it is not caused solemnly by Covid. There are a number of reasons why SMMEs fail and these reasons can be found in many textbooks. What isn’t found in textbooks, is the emotional and mental strain that failure has on the entrepreneur. There is a local entrepreneur who I respect a great deal in my hometown. He once shared a story of how he had a full inventory of stock for his business and how the stock was subsequently stolen. He explained how that theft of stock broke him and threw him into depression. He did not go into detail about how he recovered but it was the humbling experience to hear this man, who’s probably knocking on a million now, share how he felt in a moment in defeat.
The thing that makes it so difficult for the entrepreneur to deal with defeat and failures is because the defeat or failure falls fully on your shoulders. You cannot blame a boss. You cannot blame co-workers. You cannot blame the work environment. The only person you can blame is yourself and the lack of preparation you undertook to avoid the failure.
One of the primary reasons why successful people (some of them) do not talk about failures, is because they can easily bounce back. And let me explain what I mean by that. One thing that I have noticed is that the higher you are in life, the more opportunities will present themselves to you. The higher you are in life, your fall will not be on the ground. It will be on the comfy cushion of a rainy day cash reserve. If you are a start-up entrepreneur and you have invested all your money into a business, when that business fails, all your money will be gone too. It is not easy to recover from that. For you, that is not a life lesson that will teach you about business. For you, that is a disaster that will permanently alter the course of your life.
Another thing about really wealthy people, most of them come from money or have connections to money. Let us not deceive ourselves with this fact. Very few entrepreneurs actually started with nothing. Very few successful entrepreneurs started with absolutely nothing and were able to connect with money along their journey. Most successful entrepreneurs already had a leg up. Elon Musk had the opportunity to go to Canada and came from money that give him a leg up in Canada. Bill Gates’ parents were highly influential people and sat on various big company boards. Theo Baloyi was (or rather is) a certified accountant who worked for PWC for 5 years. These people already had money or access to money to ensure that their business ventures succeeded or go on an accelerated boost to reach success.
It is true, they did work smart and hard to gain success. And their smartness and work ethic are what make us admire them. Because in the same breath, there are plenty of folks who came from money and ruined their lives. The fact that these people knew what to do with their money and the connections they had to money is what makes us respect them. But in the same breath, their “self-made” narrative tends to lead us astray.
When Elon Musk experienced those nervous breakdowns, he had the money to afford the best mental experts. When most of these successful people experience breakdowns and great defeat, they can afford to book into 5 star, private resorts that are not found on Airbnb or Booking.Com for a week or even a month to recoup. Shortly after the vaccines were made available in Europe, a scandal ensued about how Rupert rushed to a hospital in the Netherlands to get vaccinated. Obviously, people had a great debate about this act. But the truth is, that is what money can able you to do.
As a young entrepreneur, when you fail, you do not have the luxury to bounce back so easily. Failure crushes your spirit and drive. Failure has the ability to render you emotionless. The best place to see this is in sports games. In important games like a cup final, the defeat sometimes weighs so heavy on the losing team that they can’t help but cry. Regardless it is on national (or international) television. Defeat to capture the Copa America made Lionel Messi retire, temporarily, from international football. That is how sharp the pain of defeat and failure is.
Failure rips one’s heart into pieces. As your lay on the ground, gathering strength to get back up, the broken pieces further dig deeper into your body. Questions of doubt, your confidence, and your worthiness take centre stage. Failure has the ability to render you motionless and robs you of hope of a brighter day. Like weed that is a gateway to stronger substances, failure is the key that opens the gates of worthlessness, hopelessness, and depression to enter your system. Failure is the stroke of lightning that has the power to completely destroy you in a moment.
Unfortunately, failure is something that these successful people do not discuss. And if they do, they use failure as a topic for their sermon on getting up from the ashes. When the strength to rise from the ashes is in fact not that easy to gather. Anyone that has experienced great failure will understand how devastating failure is. To a great degree, we can take measures to reduce the factors that enable failure in our lives. But failure, like a heavy thunderstorm, is an unavoidable life event that we all (or will) experience in our lifetime.
The essence of this discussion was to discuss how failure is not discussed in detail by these successful entrepreneurs. Most of them when they discuss failure, they brush over what happened. They say things like “it was tough but I pulled through”. They do not highlight the strategies and techniques they used to “pull-through”. The problem with this is that it sets a false narrative about entrepreneurship and the novice entrepreneur will enter business expecting a smooth sail. That if they experience a sat-back, he or she too will find a way to “pull-through” with the same ease as their role model. Their role model perhaps forgot to mention that they had millions saved in the bank. Their role model perhaps forgot to mention that they had luxurious cars, jewelry, clothes, and homes that they could use as collateral in exchange for a quick change in a moment of crisis. Their role model perhaps forgot to mention that they have the private number to the CEO of the bank they bank with. This young entrepreneur has the false notion that in the event that if they experience defeat, the power of positive thinking and law of attraction will help them “pull-through”. And this is truly not the case, especially in business.
Last year, it was the first time in a very long time that I experienced such a defeat. I had been successful in some form or shape in my endeavors that I forgot how bitter the taste of defeat is. It was the first time in 7 years that I had to ask myself whether am I on the right path or not. The pain of failure made me crawl into a hole of despair where I questioned my very will to live. Thank God I was not suicidal. But I was hopeless, I was a corpse in a living body. And my drastic weight increase is a result of that state I was in.
The failure to get a business off the ground broke me in a way that I did not expect. I had gotten used to getting wins in my endeavors. I had gotten used to getting lost in dreams of a brighter tomorrow. I had forgotten how dark a bad day can be. Lucky for me, this was not my first dance with defeat. I was better prepared to “pull-through”. It took a well but one found the strength to bounce back.
Failure is simply one of those elements in life that no textbook can ever teach you about. It is one of those elements you have to experience to understand fully. It is best that you be prepared when that day happens. As an entrepreneur, the best preparation will be having cash in your bank account. At least 3 months' worth of cash that can cover overheads and urgent expenses. This way, the blow of defeat can be softened on a bed of cash. This, as an entrepreneur, will help you “pull-through.”
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