Dealing with Failure

Never say it can’t get worse. On Wednesday I got a knock back from a potential customer we were really excited about working with. Then I found another prospect I had been nurturing for months had moved companies and I’d have to start from scratch. On Thursday I opened my tax bill. If that cheeky man from the Inland Revenue appears on telly I’m going to put his bowler where the sun don’t shine.

I’m now taking comfort from the school of thought that says anyone who is not regularly experiencing failure and rejection is not trying hard enough. I’ve certainly left my ‘comfort zone’, but its still pretty grim, and it’s important to find ways of dealing with it.

The first is not to fixate, but look at the bigger picture. Sure, we get rejections, but when you work out your ‘conversion ratio’, they become easier to swallow. As Tom Farmer said when he started out ‘Every rejection is one step closer to the burning yes’.

The second thing is to confront your problems directly. Probably my worst business experience to date was having to sack my best friend. I put if off for months but the situation just got worse and our relationship deteriorated. When I actually built up the bottle up to do it, it was not nearly as horrific as I had expected. Even my friend said he was relieved, as he knew it had not been working either.

Don’t just blame yourself. The little I remember from my psychology degree said when something bad happens, we automatically overplay our role in this. Usually rejection comes from factors completely out of your control, and yet people endlessly beat themselves up about it. You have to go back to the company or person and find out exactly what the cause was (and resist the urge to stick pins in a voodoo doll of them).

Try not to wallow in it. A problem shared might be a problem halved for you but not for the poor schmuck you’ve just dumped the problem on. Find a way of exercising your frustrations privately, but publicly keep a smiling face. As my brother used to remind me, smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you get a wet face.

I received an email from a reader who said whenever she most felt like jacking it in, another project comes along and she gets really excited. It underlies my favourite definition of an entrepreneur as someone who gets up one more time than they get knocked down.