If at First You Don't Succeed
We've all been there. Perhaps we have a passion that we'd love to make into a lucrative career. Or maybe we have a specific skill that could easily be transformed into a marketable business. Whatever the case, starting your own small business can be exciting - and scary. Having the stamina and "thick skin" to sustain yourself through successes and failures is paramount. Staying motivated to persevere is the fuel on which your business runs. In his book, If at First You Don't Succeed: the Eight Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs, Brent Bowers - a former small business editor for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal - takes a look at the familiar traits shared by successful small business owners. One of Bowers' key themes is that most entrepreneurs - who ultimately become successful - will inevitably fail on their first try. Bowers notes, "Some entrepreneurs brag about their bloopers. As one of the experts I talked to told me, they consider making a mess of things practically a badge of honor so long as they take stock of what went wrong and learn from it." Ultimately, Bowers posits that these failures are a necessary and natural part of the journey. By transforming challenges into opportunities for learning, small business owners can create their own customized learning process and eventual path to success. Bowers structures his chapters around exploring the eight key patterns he considers critical to entrepreneurial success. These include: |
