Keep It Coming
Step 1: Start a business. Step 2: Fail. Step 3: Start a business. Repeat as necessary.
On his first try, Edmund Hillary failed at climbing Mount
Everest. But he lived to share his story with an enthusiastic
audience in England, shouting, "Mount Everest, you beat me the
first time, but I'll beat you the next time, because you've
grown all you are going to grow, but I'm still growing!"
Hillary's boast was a bit off: His second attempt was a failure
as well. But he persisted, and on May 29, 1953, Hillary and his
porter, Tenzing Norgay, were the first humans to climb the
world's tallest mountain. Or at least the first to live to tell
the tale. If Hillary, now 82, had given up after his first try, he
might still be an anonymous beekeeper living in New Zealand.
"We went from
the New Economy to the New Reality before anybody had a chance to
enjoy it."
|
Running a business is a little like climbing Mount Everest:
There's a great chance you're going to fail. The most
current figures from the SBA show that 550,000 businesses closed in
2000. And an SBA study shows that only 39.5 percent of companies
make it past their sixth year. And it's getting
tougher-especially to find funding. "We went from the New
Economy to the New Reality before anybody had a chance to enjoy
it," says Emory Winship, managing director for Conversus Group
LLC, a New York City consulting firm that assesses and turns around
venture-backed start-ups that are in trouble. "Entrepreneurs
went from millionaires on paper to paupers."
So if you've ever attempted a business before and failed,
you have nothing to be ashamed of.
Content Continues Below
Page 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 