Why FAILING Is Critical To Your Success As an Entrepreneur

byTimMcKinlay

71.7K followers

Updated 7 years ago

Many people fear they will fail in their endeavour to build a profitable online business.

This same fear leads people to overthink things, to the point they do not take any action at all. Or if they do take action, they stop somewhere along the way, out of fear they'll just end up failing down the road.

It sucks and it's 100% unnecessary, and avoidable.

So I really want to address this today.

Head on.

By the time you finish reading this post, you will understand that failing is not only normal, but that it is CRITICAL to your success. In fact, it's something you actually want to welcome as you build out your business.

Let me explain...

The "Norm" vs Entrepreneurship

Before we get into how you can overcome a fear of failing, let's consider the cause. After all, if you don't know why this fear is holding you back in the first place, how can you overcome it?

And the best way to understand this fear and why it exists, is to look at how most people view failure versus how entrepreneurs view failure.

Most People Believe Failing is a BAD Thing

Most people believe that failing is a bad thing, and spend most of their life trying to avoid it. When you consider how most of use grew up, this makes perfect sense too.

From a young age we go to school, so we can learn how to become valued members of society. Regardless of which school you attend, or how you attend, this is the common goal.

I think we can all agree on this.

During our time at school we are graded on how well we are doing, primarily through exams and assignments. The most successful students are almost always those who bury their head in the books and study hard.

After all, the more you learn, the better you will perform.

Equally important to 'performing better' though, is how studying harder means you are a LOT less likely to FAIL come exam time.

Makes perfect sense, right?

So most people, from a very early age, learn to actively avoid and even fear failing.

This only heightens as we move into college too. Exams at a university level literally make or break the rest of your professional career. Which directly affects the rest of your life and how successful you become.

It's a BIG deal, so there's a lot of pressure to avoid failing.

All that study, sacrifice, and hard work is just as much about 'doing well' as it is about avoiding failure.

So without a doubt, failing is seen by many people as a bad thing. From young to young at heart.

Which is why many people do everything in their power to avoid it.

Now let's contrast this with being an entrepreneur. Because this is where you will see how, as an entrepreneur, you need to view failing in a completely different light. At least, if you want to succeed.

Entrepreneurship Is About Failing Forward >>>

Believe it or not, a big part of being an entrepreneur is about failing.

Specifically, failing forward.

Without any exaggeration- if you are not willing to accept failing as part of your journey, then you are headed for disaster as an entrepreneur.

It really is THAT big of a deal.

But why?

Because no person is perfect, no business is perfect, no niche is perfect, no platform is perfect. NOTHING is perfect. Period.

So mistakes WILL be made.

And that's OK.

Because without making mistakes you simply will not learn. It's impossible. Which is why 'failing' is so important.

Here's the process of 'failing forward' to show you what I mean:

Learn => take action => succeed or fail => repeat

This IS the learning process so you need to get comfortable with it.

And believe me, I've had my fair share of failures along my journey and I fully expect that I will fail at stuff right up until the day I leave this earth. Because that is life. I would rather try and fail, so that I have a chance to learn and do better, to grow and develop my skills, than to not try out of fear of failing.

There are MANY examples I could give of how I've 'failed' at stuff too.

Here's some examples...

• The first site I ever built sucked (really). I had no idea what I was doing, but I did my best. And it led me to earning my first ever Amazon commission
• When I first started writing content it was terrible, maybe even embarrassing lol- now I write better articles that people enjoy at a much higher rate
• Despite a lot of effort, I got very little traffic on my sites in the first few months- but I stuck at it, and now I get tons of quality traffic to my sites each and every month
• It took me 3 months of "failing" and making mistakes before I made so much as ONE dollar online- fast forward a lot of 'hits and misses' later, and now I earn a living this way!

So if you're reading this as a newbie, and you want to succeed, then know that the biggest difference between you and I is that I've been failing forward for longer.

That's it.

I can say with ABSOLUTE confidence that if I didn't fail at stuff along the road, I would simply not be here today. I'd be taking the 'safe' route and working my sucky old job that made me miserable.

Here are some other examples to reinforce what I am saying here.

Ask yourself the following...

Did Michael Jordan walk out onto the court starting as a Pro? No. Chances are he could barely dribble the ball properly at first! But through practice he went on to become one of the greatest basketball players in history.

Did Warren Buffet start out as one of the most successful investors of all time? No. No doubt he has placed a LOT of bad trades, and made some dumb investment choices in his time, to get where he is now.

Did Kyle and Carson start Wealthy Affiliate as an amazing platform with millions of members and all the great tools, training and support we now have? No. It started out as a simple site where they sold keyword lists to people. They developed WA into what it is now through years of experience, trial and error, mistakes and successes. All of which they learned from and used to create what we now have- an epic platform that no other platform comes even close to rivalling (in my humble opinion).

Did ANYONE here who is successful start by choosing the perfect niche, finding the best keywords, writing the best content, and crushing it with the highest conversion rates? Did they start out as experts who dominate within their respective niche? Not a chance. They started out making lots of mistakes while they developed their skill set. They started out failing at stuff, and learning as they went along, so they could improve their business and get to where they are now.

So if you take nothing else away from this article- know that failing is absolutely critical to your success.

Not important... CRITICAL.

You will make mistakes, and you will fail at times. But you will NEVER ultimately fail as long as you never give up.

I would go as far as to say that success is inevitable for those who simply do not quit.

Conclusion

Understanding that failing is part of your journey, and that this is actually a good thing (as long as you learn and move forward) is key.

So yes, there will be challenges. And yes, you will make mistakes and fail at things along the way. But this is a GOOD thing and it's how you will develop into becoming a successful online entrepreneur.

So get comfortable with it. Matter of fact, make it happen at a faster rate!

Because the quicker you get through the process of failing forward, the quicker you will start achieving your goals.

You have (literally) everything you need here at WA. So get stuck into the training, take massive action, ask lots of questions. And most of all- NEVER give up.

If you do this, then you DO have what it takes, and you will succeed.