You Need to Be a Failure in Order to Be a Success

Next to the Valley View Ferry

Richmond, Kentucky

When you look at many of the great entrepreneurs that made America such a wonderful place to live in you can't help but think about Thomas Edison. If you didn't hear the story about how Edison invented the light bulb, you must be living in a cave. Edison spent years and years and lots of money trying to figure out how to create a light bulb that would work.  Finally, after working on the project which would've made most people pull their hair out,  and run in absolute frustration Edison was successful. “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

 Success Is Built on Failure

Many successful entrepreneurs will chuckle when they hear somebody call them an "overnight success". The reason they laugh that the statement is because they spent years and years trying to successfully achieve a goal that they have been pursuing, and then all of a sudden,in one day they achieve their goal. It would appear to everybody else that was an overnight success process, but in reality it was probably a long string of failures in which a person finally achieves the greatness that they were looking for.  One of the main ingredients for all of this of course is perseverance. If you give up pursuing your dream you will have put the final nail in the coffin of what you were trying to do and in that sense, you will be a failure.  You have to keep your ultimate goal in mind as you work toward the success you dream about.

Knowledge Is Power

One of the ways that you can move quickly towards your objective is to constantly feed your mind with the knowledge that you need to move toward your goal. If you are a business owner and you want to be successful with your venture, you have to constantly read up on marketing strategies and any process that will bring you closer to bringing money into your door.  You have to find out what other people are doing that are successful and then model though strategies and behaviors which will be conducive to achieving your goals.  The reason that this is so important for you to do is because these people have the experience of failing. They have been through many diverse situations and their knowledge and experience can help you. So, it is vital for you to gain valuable knowledge from people who've already been there.

Action, Action, Action

The other thing you must do that is very important is to take action. Not just a little action here and there but a massive amount of action. You need to put everything you can into making your life or business work and it can only be achieved by actually doing the work that you need to do.  I think it would be very difficult to think of a successful person that was not moving and gaining momentum in their business or life.

I was watching an episode of the ABC TV show Shark Tank several weeks ago.  Some lady came in with a business idea and she pitched it at the millionaire and billionaire people in the hope of getting them to become a partner with her financially and entrepreneurially. Everything was going fine for her as she presented her product and business idea until she told one of the Sharks (the nickname given to the millionaire and billionaire entrepreneurs they were pitching to) that they might not be good enough for her since she worked on her business 8 to 12 hours a day. One of the sharks looked at her and said, "I don't work my business 8 to 12 hours a day, I work my business 16 to 20 hours a day so that I can sit here and tell people like you that I'm not going to do business with you."  The woman stood there in complete, stunned silence. I have to admit, I thought she was being really stupid with a statement like that, but it gives people like me opportunity to see just how hard a real entrepreneur works.

So if you are thinking of becoming an entrepreneur or you want to increase the bottom line in your business you may just want to take a look at a couple of these success principles. No, they are not easy and they are not what most people want to hear, but it is the reality of the business world.

Mark "Elmo" Ellis