Weekly-ish Wisdom from Jennifer Kem

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5 Ways to Deal with Failure as an Entrepreneur

5 Ways to Deal with Failure as an Entrepreneur.001

Just like success, failure is universal. 

There have been many people before you and me that have failed countless times and even then, we still make our mistakes here and there.

The problem is that the majority of people look at failure in a negative light when it really shouldn’t be. 

If you haven’t read my latest post, be sure to read it here before getting started with this.

Having been in the industry for over 10 years, I know what it’s like to be on top of the world to find myself at the bottom the next. But instead of hating and beating myself up for it, I decided to learn from it instead. 

The truth is that entrepreneurs don’t sleep on their failure. They harness it and they use it as fuel to move them forward instead, and I’ll be showing you the five ways on how to deal with failure.

Don’t Name Your Failures, Failures

Someone once said that your beliefs and points of view become a part of you and this includes failures, too. You see, the more a person views failures as failures, the more they’ll feel like crap. But if you decide to look at failures as something more positive, it will push you to become better.

For me, I like to see them as a test like the ones I’d take back during my school days. If I’d get the answer wrong, I’d go over it and study that until I became a master at it.

As I run my businesses today, I still look at my failures as a life long test.

Some other ways to look at it are lessons, motivation, and inspiration.

Failure is a Stepping Stone

From the moment we’re born, we started off being carried by our loved ones before crawling around to being able to walk. 

When it comes to failure, the stepping stones we take look like an assessment. Frankly, that means that you need to be willing to get past your ego, get past your crying, get past your frustration, and go take a step back to look at the stepping stones it took to get to what happened. 

By being able to see everything as is and learn from it is the epitome of success.

Like most people, many won’t hit a home run out of the first pass. But only a few will look at where they need to tweak their moves to become a better batter.

Failing and Community 

Never fail alone. 

Now I don’t mean to surround yourself with a bunch of negative nancies, right? 

Look, you’re an imperfect human doing superhuman things, especially if you’re an entrepreneur. So it’s even more important that you need your own Justice League of America or Justice League of the world and get in with the posse that cares, that will lift you up, will let you borrow their cape with somebody who’s handed you some kryptonite. 

By being surrounded by the right group of people, your failures will become the fuel to light up the fire.

Don’t Hide Your Failures

As a people, we are always looking to connect with another soul, especially when it comes to running a business. 

It’s because of this: your failures again show people that you’re authentic and real. 

That’s one of the reason why I love the amazing Brand Story Challenge. As part of their stepping stones, I pushed my Posse to tell the truth and the story of what has brought you to this point that you are right now. And guess what? They and you are still going to create new stories. 

Every failure, every opportunity allows you to help and show people you are willing to take the risk for them. 

Remember Why You Started

Let me ask you something: Why do you want to be an entrepreneur?

Let me guess. Is it along the lines of having freedom, being able to follow your dreams, and being successful?

If so, you have to realize that You can’t just Google.com your results. You have to put in the work and sometimes, putting in the work looks a lot like failure when it really isn’t. 

I get questions like, “Jen, nobody’s liking my Facebook page?” And I ask them “How long have you been doing it? And how consistently have you been doing it?” Because If you haven’t been doing it consistently, of course no one knows about you, right? You see, as long as you’re willing to become better than the person you were yesterday, you’ve already succeeded.

By remembering why you started, your failures become your biggest motivators.

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