Saturday, July 18, 2015

Lesson 12: Failing Forward

The lesson this week struck my right in the heart.  I know that I’m very afraid to fail.  I’ve failed at small things but I’m afraid to fail big.  What I mean by that is that I have a fear of leaving my full time job to strike it out on my own.  I have a lovely wife and 5 children that I need to provide for.  Tom Nall, the Acton Hero that I learned about this week said that while entrepreneurs are risk takers, it is important to remember that they take calculated risks.  There’s a lot of work that goes into Entrepreneurship.  Just because I might have a good idea, doesn’t mean that it really is.  I’m mitigating my risks by going back to school and getting more business basics that will help me in my entrepreneurial journey.  One time I make a $500.00 order of artglass from Sweden.  My goal was to either sell it via retail or wholesale it.  That business didn’t go anywhere even though the product was great.  I didn’t do the hard work beforehand to make my risk more calculated.  If I were to do this business again in the future, I would now have the added benefit of a web business creation class and this class to my experience.  I would know how to build a website and how to market the product with different SEO capabilities.  The other thing I would do is to make sure that I started the venture well-funded.  We always hear about those rare cases where people started with very little money and turned their business into a multi-million dollar empire.  Proper planning prevents poor performance!

My $100.00 business challenge update.  I’ve now ended with two clients.  Truthfully, I’m not sure if I could’ve handled anymore with my busy schedule.  Next week for finals week I’ll be in Salt Lake City from Monday until Friday.  I saw some great presentations from other students and was amazed at how great they all did.  During the discussion boards I had great feedback on items I had not considered before.  I was so focused on selling a web page buildout that I wasn’t thinking about the needs of these clients in the long term.  How would I charge them afterwards?  This has been a very enlightening week and I’m so grateful!

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