Everyone experiences failure. It’s a part of the process, but knowing this doesn’t make it any less stressful or demotivating. In this excerpt from his book, Inner Drive: From Underdog to Global Company, our CEO Arsen Tomsky talks about failure, and how to deal with it. You’ll have to read the book to learn about the three failures he’s referring to, and how they later led to success, but here’s what he had to say about how to deal with them.
People dislike and fear failures. Failures can demotivate you, sap your energy, and make you lose faith in yourself. I’m no exception, but I have learned over time to react more calmly, and see the upside in it. I’ve had three major failures in my entrepreneurial career: the situation with the university and Three Valleys, the failed attempt to expand our regional portal model, and the blocking of our sites in Kazakhstan. These were strong blows to me and the company. However, please note the following simple and important fact: these failures led to the greatest successes in my life and business career.
As I’ve explained, Yakutsk University was granted the status of an “innovative university” after the competition, and was able to take the next step several years later to be named a federal university, along with seven of the country’s largest universities. Our work on the portal project necessitated a major upgrade in ykt.ru’s technology, which went on to become Russia’s foremost regional portal in terms of penetration of the regional internet audience. I took the attack in Kazakhstan very personally and became very involved in inDriver, spending most of my time on it. Before that, I had seen it as an important project, but one of many. We repulsed the attack in Kazakhstan and increased our indicators there by many times their previous level. Over the next several years, due in large part to the team’s and my personal mobilization and focus, we took a huge step forward in the development of the project, improved the technology, moved into many more new cities, and began our international expansion.
It’s not worth it to go intentionally looking for failures, of course. Failures only teach you and your team what not to do, while success is valuable in that it teaches you how to achieve more of the same. The book Rework: Business without Prejudice cites an interesting fact: a study by Harvard Business School has determined that the chances of building a successful business are the same for an entrepreneur who has already made an unsuccessful attempt and one who is starting his or her first business––23%. An entrepreneur with existing past success has better chances––37%.
From this, we can conclude:
-We all take hits from life. You just need to be one of those who don’t give up––someone who learns from and overcomes failure, and grows stronger.
-Experience is an achievement that you can never lose, and is thus as valuable in its own way as the final result.
-Failure may turn into a wild success. Don’t rush to conclusions. What seems like defeat now will turn out to be either a complete victory, or the necessary stimulus driving you to one.
-Most importantly, don’t be afraid to take action. A person who does nothing gets no results and no chances. When you do undertake something, work on it as hard as you can.
Inner Drive: From Underdog to Global Company is available in English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Nepali and Portuguese. To download it, go to indrive.com/book
