I remember reading a book on Judo a long time ago. It advised that to be a good martial arts practitioner one must learn how to fall. It made a lot of sense since if a person is trying to learn Judo and doesn’t learn to minimize one’s fall, great injury is probably bound to happen. As a small online entrepreneur, I wasn’t aware at the time that this same wise advice can also apply to running your own online business. In order to be a good businessperson, you have to learn how to fail.
Failure is endemic in everything we do. The world is uncertain and many of the best laid plans don’t always bear fruit. At best, many of them do not bear the kind of fruit we expected. People should expect disappointments and obstacles since they are part of life. However, expecting obstacles and being ready to learn from them are very different from expecting to fail and giving up. The ability to fail “the right way” goes a long way in helping us avoid the number one enemy of success
in the real world–quitting. Quitting is the sure fire way to lose at anything. You have effectively stopped the clock. Game over. By learning to fail “the...