Lessons in Entrepreneurship from a 15-month-old
Last week my 15-month-old son decided to learn to walk. Step one: standing. He bends his knees, arches his back, and pushes up with his hands. Shifting weight from one foot to another – like an urban surfer balancing himself on solid floor – he teeters for 2 or 3 seconds. And then falls – hard – on his bottom. Without missing a beat he looks up at us, grins, laughs, and applauds himself vigorously.
Ask any established entrepreneurs their advice for an aspiring entrepreneur, and they’ll all give you the same answer: fail fast. Entrepreneurs wear their failures like a badge of honor. It means you’ve taken a risk, tried something new. They extol the importance of overcoming fears and inhibitions. They embrace each failure as a learning opportunity – the source of a new insight, a new chance to improve. As one LearnServe parent wrote me last spring, “Failure can be a better teacher than success.”
At the same time, the failure fad risks becoming a fetish – an end in itself. Geoff Lewis, writing last December in the Washington Post, acknowledged that “America’s tolerance for failure stands in admirable contrast to cultures where a single failure automatically destroys your life.” Yet he cautioned against “‘Failure’ as fast fashion, peddled by wildly successful people, packaged for mass consumption.” Failure is real, he reminds, and it can be devastating. Lewis encourages us to strike a balance: to “fear [failure] enough to try hard to succeed, yet not so much that we don’t attempt new things.”
Though they may celebrate their failures, most entrepreneurs don’t aspire for failure. They embrace failure in their dogged pursuit of excellence.
Which brings me back to my 15-month-old. After falling hard, grinning, laughing, and applauding himself vigorously, my son picks himself right back up and tries again. He wants to stand. He wants to walk. But he’s able to find humor in the process, and something to celebrate in each attempt.
As we each dive into our entrepreneurial pursuits, we would all do well to channel our inner 15-month-old. Don’t let our inhibitions overcome our aspirations. Aspire for excellence. Learn from each attempt. And enjoy the process.
~ by Scott Rechler