If You Can’t Live With Mistakes Keep Your Day Job

I’ve had several discussions lately, by coincidence or not, of entrepreneurs looking at fear of failure, fear of launching, and dealing with mistakes.

I really believe one of the most important qualities of a successful entrepreneur is acknowledging and accepting mistakes. If you are going to start a business, or run a business, or grow a business, you will make mistakes. It comes with the territory. You have to deal with uncertainty all the time, you have to make decisions quickly, and you won’t always be right.

Some people can’t live with mistakes. They plague themselves about them. They manufacture intricate stories about how it wasn’t really a mistake. They get so afraid of making them that they don’t do anything. They are constantly on the defense.

Don’t let that be you. Keep your eyes open. You’ve made mistakes, you’ll make more of them. Embrace the mistake, take long enough with it to catalog in your mind what you did wrong and what you’ll do differently in the future, and then let it go.

If you can’t live with mistakes, keep your day job.

Perhaps it’s not a mistake that the “business mistake” category in this blog has 116 posts — not counting this one. And I love John Caddell’s mistake bank blog posts at themistakebank.com.

(image: opensourceway via Flickrcc)

Comments

  • Listen Up Newbies: Best Advice for First-time Entrepreneurs says:

    […] You have to be able to deal with mistakes. You’ll make mistakes. […]

  • John Caddell says:

    Thank you, Tim! I love how open you are with your own mistake stories. You are doing a great service for entrepreneurs everywhere. Regards, john

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