Failure is the Key to Success

Most people I know, including me from time to time, do not like failure. There can be lots of financial and psychological costs to failure.

However, most successes in business and life are preceded by failure. Most times, lots of failure.

Additionally, sometimes winning ideas come from losing.

Here’s a great example: In 1985, Proforma was only doing business in Cleveland, Ohio. I wanted to open another sales office. I chose Columbus, Ohio, because of its proximity to Cleveland.

I ran ads in newspapers, found a few candidates, and drove down to Columbus to interview them. After another visit and some careful consideration, I chose the candidate we wanted to be our first remote sales manager.

I drove to Columbus to meet with him and discuss our offer to hire him. When we met, he decided to decline my offer because he had decided he wanted to own his own business just as I did.

Ouch. At first, that “failure” stung.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there were probably many other people just like that candidate that would rather own their own business. I thought long and hard about how we could have possibly helped that candidate start his or her own business.

After about a year of research, we introduced our distributorship ownership business model.

Ends up that one of the best things that ever happened to Proforma was my “failure” to hire our first remote office sales manager.

Don't fear failure. Learn from it.