How many Business Failures did you have before success?

[TheCj]

What I consider success has changed, before I considered just a time for money side gig was a success. Took me 4 attempts to find something that got me "profit".
Now success is something that I will be able to scale and separate from my time and location, so still failing..

 

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[Stevee2K]

What do u mean by successful? monthly income, popularity, tendency?

 

[fastlanedoll]

It's to do with personality defects that disproportionately and causally affect the poor.

Holy shit. I've been thinking this for so long, just never really been able to articulate it.

Personality defects exist in the rich as well. I guess money can get to your head. I know you can't generalise, but here it is.

The reason I know this is because I see this in my patients I come into contact with people from all walks of life. After a while, you definitely see patterns.

Trust me, the middle class is the easiest to deal with.

 

[Jadpapi]

at 21 years old , Italian restaurant Failed due to the 2008 rescission, and i didn't save money for emergency, it was crazy for me, didn't lose money as i started it with only 5k. was doing good for a year, and half.
after that, a lot of small mall kiosk businesses , never lost money in it, just closed them after they stop making money.
kids amusement rides inside the malls, sold last one last year at the right time. malls are dying in general. it was successful businesses for 5 years, but to make me rich.
back to 9-5 again till i start on something good, this time i am going to be more patient before i go all in again.
i am sure there is other small business ventures i forgot.

 

[Entre Eyes]

Offline I was driven Salesman of the Month most of the year but had no life and hated every minute of it. Is that Success?

Online is a funny story....I stumbled into Success right off the bat with a hit. BUT....had no idea on how to capitalize at that time. Blew it. Had 3000 buyers that trusted me in a very short time, momentum, could have hired a Mentor, expanded, but I coasted.

Been a salmon swimming up stream for years, sometimes the entrepreneur in us needs to have a slice of humble pie and think long game ha.

 

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[eduinvestor]

At 17 years old I created a platform to help entrepreneurs meet investors and other experienced entrepreneurs to help them build their company.

The platform arrived to (almost) 1000 users, there were 11,000€ deposited from investors that were looking for startups and 3 entrepreneurs who shared their business ideas looking for help.

Eventually I had to shut down the company.

Is that considered a failure?

 

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[aeden]

I was part of multiple business attempts that failed, even though I was not the founder, so I'm counting those.

 

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[ygtrhos]

Currently 2.

1. Amazon FBA with plastic part cups: Very tough competition, low entry.
2. Proofreading agency: I still have not given up on this, I need to find another marketing channel than G Ads. Currently busy with other stuff though.

 

[stormjb1]

Needed this thread!!!

Just wrapped up on attempt number 4, been feeling very discouraged for a few months now like it’s “just not meant to be” (even playing the self-pity victim card at times).

But I have this Bill Burr clip bookmarked for whenever I catch myself on the verge of tapping out which usually snaps me out of it.

View: https://youtu.be/rijfrpHGLUc


As @MJ DeMarco says “Failure is the sweat of success” must keep moving forward with the experience and knowledge gained from the failures.

 

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[Abrodos]

Probably 4 and still trying.
First one, I tried selling handmade plush toys and polymer clay jewellery with a friend. Cute stuff but took soo many hours to produce, and we had to put a super low price.

From this I moved to giant dragon sculptures for folk performances, also too time consuming and clients with very low budgets so also a "failure", even though I made 4-5 very cool pieces and I got 3,000 profit on each, but for a year of work each (and I've "made history" in a way, this pieces will probably be used for hundreds of years).

On parallel I did custom resin trophy commissions, which worked quite well (500-1000 a month on the good months), but once I tried raising prices to match with a good hourly rate (20€/h), I started having problems with clients.

Also random commissions (portrait paintings and theatre props mainly) for some of which I've been able to charge that hourly rate, some others which have been major fails. But overall well paid.

And, for a year, I've been both preparing for a scripted backup plan (at college to become a high school teacher) and developing a CENTS based business on my own.

 

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[Chinese alligato]

[报价 = & quot;
;有点让我想起我做准分子激光原位角膜磨镶术的时候。& Nbsp;一天早上，我以完美的视力醒来，不记得我看不到的时间。
[/引用]
眼睛近视手术真的安全吗？我的老师说如果100% 是安全的。为什么比尔·盖茨还戴着眼镜？

 

[mercenariez]

I’m probably en route to #1.

 

[WJK]

I’m probably en route to #1.

Only one???? I have small failures every day. But, I also have those successes that make it all worth the time and effort.

 

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[mercenariez]

Only one???? I have small failures every day. But, I also have those successes that make it all worth the time and effort.

It’s a painful one though, I’ve been working on it for almost 3 years now.

 

[mercenariez]

Yes, those hurt. I've had some BIG ones over the years. What have you learned? What can you take forward from the situation? Can you salavage anything? Hang in there. This is one stone in your road.

Thank you for your reply. I’m still not 100% sure what I could have done better; I’m still reflecting on it.

In general, I tried to grow the business too fast and took on more orders than I could chew. Thus, a lot of unhappy customers, since we had to refund all the ones we couldn’t fulfill. Not to mention lost money.

The thing is, I’m not even sure if doing the opposite (going too slow) would’ve been a better approach, as going fast help pushed myself to my limits.

One thing I can say is I think I misinterpreted DeMarco’s TMF statement (“debt can be useful”). I went into debt to grow the business (ranging from ~$15-$25k), and after the fact, I think it would have been much wiser to not have gone into debt at all, as it would’ve cost me much less in interest had I simply just had a larger savings balance prior.

At the same time, taking on the debt allowed me to advance to the forefront of my niche industry (having to take too much time to save instead might have made me fall behind in terms of innovation. Because we took on debt, we’re now definitely a leader in this niche, but our rate of production can’t meet the demand, and the debt sucks).

I am fortunate enough to be able to survive the debt via making some clever and critical financial moves, but spending 3 years to only be negative overall at this point is quite a bummer. It’s weird since I could have been “positive” if I left the business early (at four figures revenue) but because I tried to grow (to five figures and beyond) I’m now negative. Growing is really confusing to me. I really don’t understand the revenue vs profit game — for us, growing allows higher revenue but weaker (short term) profit margins (due to the costs of growing), whilst staying the same size allows for healthy margins but at the cost of actually becoming big at all >_>. One might think that the “investment” in growing is worth it, but it’s so hard to predict the future. It really is just a big risk imo, which can be mitigated and minimized, but time and energy will always be lost no matter what. Ideally one would want to just bootstrap profitably all the way, but this has been much harder in practice in my experience to actually do.

Undoubtedly I had to “learn” a lot as the result of running my business (you just are forced to learn more in terms of finances, managing, and operations, etc. as a business owner). But I really hate leaning on the “I’m learning” excuse every time I fail.

 

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[Guest-5ty5s4]

I have had three different types of failures. The first is where the business failed and I closed the doors. The second is where a high-risk investment failed. The third type of failure is where one of my normal investments fails. The differences between the three are profound. Here's an example of each:

Business failure: When the real estate market collapsed in 1980, I owned two RE offices with a partner. We closed one, and the other we sold at a pittance to someone else who ended up closing it. Both were franchises and both failed. I lost almost all my investment in both.

High-risk investment failure: I bought an oil lease from the State of Alaska a few years ago. I started an LLC and I bought 4 contiguous surface lots to support the investment. It should have worked and I thought I had a winner. It was located contiguous to a working natural gas field. I partnered with an active oil development company that did seismic studies. That company owned other adjacent leases that they wanted to develop. When the ground was studied, my lease was outside of the gas deposit and it had NO prospectus. So, I surrendered the lease back to the State, terminated the LLC, and sold the surface properties at less than I had paid for them. I lost the investment money that I spent on the lease and the associated costs. I also had spent a lot of time and effort in the situation. NEXT...

In my normal investments, I rarely lose, unless I buy a property with a hidden problem. I always buy opposite of the market. When others are selling, I am buying. Then I sell, when most are buying. I do quite well with my normal investments. I am conservative and thoughtful.

I have only had a few total business or normal investment failures. BUT, I have had a bunch of high-risk investment failures. And I treat them totally differently.

Failure is part of the process. I try a lot of things. I know that many, if not most of them will fail. The trick is to NOT bring down the whole business or normal investment over one idea or a direction change.

Concerning high-risk investments, I have some rules. The amount I risk must be small enough for me to lose without it hurting me too much. The upside must be huge. It must be big enough to make it all worth the risk. I know that almost all of these investments will fail. I call them pie-in-the-sky investments. Most of them require me to be a "qualified investor" so they are not for a beginner. I reserve a small percentage of my cash flow to make that class of investments when they come up.

This is incredible! You should start another thread

How did you find the company that did the seismic studies? Were they going to be the ones drilling if the results were good?

Also, do you know if somebody else bought it after your go failed? I would be afraid the seismic study would be good, the oil company would downplay it, convince me to sell at a loss, and they would buy it for themselves.

 

[Herschel]

Failed 1 time and still trying.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

Actually, I got the oil company who owned the leases around me to pay for the seismic study (by a 3rd party) on my lease when they were doing theirs. That was a huge expense I didn't have. I live in a small, rural community and I know just about everyone here. This is an "oil patch" area. That oil company is known as a reliable, straight shooter. So, I trust what they said. IF my lease had been part of the gas deposit, I owned 4 contiguous lots, totaling about 40 acres, where we could have done straight and directional drilling from my lots for my lease and theirs. I had legal street access from the north and the south. And the gas field next door had a pipeline that we could have used to get our product to market under Alaskan laws. Our agreement was that I would have partnered with them or they would have bought out my lease depending on the drill results. It would have been the "gold ring" of my life. Oh well. It was a great dream while it lasted.

Oil exploration is always a HUGE gamble and this situation just happened to come available -- so I submitted a bid on it to the State auction. (At that huge lease auction, that involved lists and lists of leases, I was one of two private party bidders. The other bidders were there for their corporations.) I knew a guy who had been waiting for that leasehold to come up for bid for many years. He didn't have the money at that time to do it The oil company that did the seismic won the bids on all the leases further out from the working gas field. As the bid envelopes were opened and read, to my amazement, I won the bid on the lease which was closest to the working gas field. It was a very exciting moment.

My investment looked like a good bet at the time. I sure learned a lot about the oil industry and how the leases work here in Alaska.

People who come later have access to the seismic data after a few years. I actually reviewed all the data available at the time that I made my bid. -- but there were no seismic studies. We did do some satellite maps that looked favorable. But, the proof is in the seismic studies. I don't know of anyone who bought all those leases. I'm sure that they figure that if it could have been developed, we would have done that. And they'd be right.

There are lots of farmers down south with land that's been in their families for generations, with each generation (usually poor, but with lots of land) saying that this will be the day that the big oil guys start drilling on their land and they all become rich! You know, like the "Beverly Hillbillies."

Well, the day never comes, people are born and die, they move away, but the land sits there. In some cases, nothing happens even though there are oil wells and deposits everywhere around them. The question is, how do you even know what's under it if you never get a study? Is sitting there waiting and hoping for 100 years the only thing such a poor landowner could do?

(I realize this is a huge derailment to the thread, sorry)

 

[Greg26750]

1. Shopify store selling confectionery (failed, didn't understand my market)
2. Blog on controversial topics (failed, didn't persist and gave up after 3 months)
3. Web design freelancing (didn't fail, but I didn't try to scale so i moved into..)
4. PPC management (currently succeeding, hit 6 figures this year and growing HR so I remove myself entirely from the business)

As long as you learn something, each business is not a failure.

Congratulations.
Sorru but what is PPC management ?

 

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[WJK]

Because I was unaware of how unsustainable it would be, my first year was an incredible success. However, in my second year, I failed on every metric. In year two, I made so many costly mistakes.
Now that year three has begun, I've learned SO MUCH about running a business that I can't really consider year 2 to be a failure, but it was still a costly experience. I took many risks that more seasoned businesspeople would never take, and I now promise never to repeat those errors. Even though they were very costly errors, the cost was still less than a year of business school, and I already had connections and real-world experience.
Since I surpassed the industry learning curve during those first two years, I refer to them as "my street MBA."
Months have passed before I was able to move past how terrible year two was. But the fact that I now know where to concentrate my efforts gives me hope.

I too have had a lot of failures over the years. Many of those were necessary steps for the successes that came later. It takes a real learning curve to make it all work. And sometimes stuff happens that is way beyond your control or experience.
We're headed for a very painful economic moment right now. I saw this coming a few years ago and I started to prepare. I had a bunch of other RE investors around me who told me that I was stupid and didn't understand RE and how to invest. They had 8 or 10 years of experience and were into OPM (other people's money) and leverage. I was getting lean and mean through debt reduction and consolidation. I tried to tell them I had 40+ years, but they were totally unimpressed. I tried to explain the early 1980's inflation fix (21% and 22% interest rates) and the 1990 decade when the bottom fell out of the RE market for years on end. Time will tell. Like Warren Buffet says, when the tide goes out, we'll see who is skinny dipping. I'm starting to find some good RE deals right now so my ship is coming in again.

 

[WJK]

Many "failures" are a necessary step in the quest toward success It comes down to this. You cannot get from A to B without traveling through the fire. But, you can talk to the guy who has already done it and learn about fire suits!

It also has to do with the odds. I live by my assessment of my odds. I keep stats to create averages on just about everything I do. I know how many contacts it makes to gain a prospect. I know how many prospects it takes to make a RE offer. I know how many offers it takes to get an accepted RE deal and how many I close. Those scores of attempts are not failures. They are just part of the process and the journey. The real trick is to find ways to up my odds of success. I can tweak my program and have better odds. It's doing A & B tests for different formats and presentations. I can find out what works better and then do it.

Anyone who doesn't fail isn't playing the game. On the other hand, they aren't succeeding either. In life, you are either moving forward or drifting backward.

 

[HoneyBadger302]

If "failure" is making some kind of profit when all is said and done, I've had side gigs that brought in money - some that resulted in spending way more than I earned in an attempt to keep them going (although spending on things I enjoyed, so there's that), but my current business is the first one that is changing my financial landscape - still a VERY, VERY long ways to go, but this is the first time when things have really taken a large financial impact, but a very long ways from success (there are many out there who still earn more in their day jobs than I do between both the business AND my day job).

I voted as if the current business is heading in the direction of success, even if it's not there yet.

 

[WJK]

If "failure" is making some kind of profit when all is said and done, I've had side gigs that brought in money - some that resulted in spending way more than I earned in an attempt to keep them going (although spending on things I enjoyed, so there's that), but my current business is the first one that is changing my financial landscape - still a VERY, VERY long ways to go, but this is the first time when things have really taken a large financial impact, but a very long ways from success (there are many out there who still earn more in their day jobs than I do between both the business AND my day job).

I voted as if the current business is heading in the direction of success, even if it's not there yet.

Failures can be a vital stepping stone to a successful venture. They can get that one contact or skill that you really, really need. They can educate you on how things work. They can become a necessary piece of a bigger puzzle. They can be a road sign to get you to change your direction... If you are really lucky, they can be more than one thing or have multiple meanings.

 

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[WJK]

I've had a couple of businesses before finding my current breadwinner. They were all valuable learning experiences, but it took a bit of trial and error to hit the sweet spot.

I sure don't expect things to work out the first time I try them. I know it's a long learning curve to figure out how it is all going to work. This is especially true for complicated operations and plans. I try to take it one part at a time and get that aspect working. Then I move on to the next one and add it to my working parts. And I start with the easiest one first and move on from there. By the time I get to the hardest part, I've had time to think about it and it goes together easier. I used to start with the hardest part and struggle with it. I found that starting there caused total failure because I was stuck without seeing a way out.

 

[datagod]

Wow! 68% are still failing. That's high amount.

I would say at least 10. But depends on your skills and so many factors.

My first project that was doing more than 200$ a mo took me at least 5 years of failing. But that's because i was extremly young, out of focus. But during that 5 years i learned various skills that most don't have.