Common Misconceptions About Failure in Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship entails risk and passion. The risk of failure, and the fear of it, is sometimes so great that we don’t try at all. Bringing an idea to life takes a tremendous amount of time, commitment, and energy. This can make it especially gut wrenching when an idea that you’ve poured so much of yourself into doesn’t come to fruition in the way we expect. It can feel like a blow to the ego, and stop us all together from pursuing an idea we’re passionate about.

As much as we try to proactively avoid it, failure isn’t a bad thing. In fact, failure is pivotal to learning. As women, we can sometimes hold ourselves back when we anticipate that we won’t do well. In fact, failure is so demotivating that one study found women who earned a B in an intro economics class were more likely to switch majors as opposed to their male counterparts who were not impacted any which way by a letter grade of an A vs a B. We hold common, often negative, misconceptions about failure in entrepreneurship. Failure can be instrumental when we frame it the right way. Here are three common misconceptions that muddle the way we see failure.

Misconception #1: Failure Means You’re Not Entrepreneurial Material

No one likes failure. Especially with entrepreneurship, where you take ownership of an idea and see it come to life, it’s difficult to see the idea fail, and it’s hard not to take that personally. We can misinterpret failure to mean that we are not entrepreneurship material. However, failing is part of the process. Once we learn to embrace failure as a stepping stone towards success, it’s a lot easier to digest and take ownership of failure.

At its core, entrepreneurship is about resilience and grit, and the willingness to take chances. Failing means you were willing to try, which is the core of an entrepreneurial spirit.

The measure of an entrepreneur is not whether an idea takes off or not, it is whether you have the courage and perseverance to see something through.

Misconception #2: Failure Means Your Idea Wasn’t Valuable

Failing doesn’t mean the idea doesn’t have value. In fact, failing can help give focus to your idea and give insight into which direction your idea should go. Failure is redirection, and adds value to the process. Pivoting is a great and necessary skill as an entrepreneur. Failure requires us to adapt and react, and pushes us closer towards our end goal. Our idea does not lose value just because the first version of it didn’t work in the way we expected. We can’t get to the second version of our idea without the first one failing. We can be tempted to discard our ideas because we’re mentally hindered by failure.

Misconception #3: Failure Means You Should Stop

Failing in entrepreneurship does not mark the end of your entrepreneurial journey, it is just the middle of it. Where we’re often tempted to place a period in our journey as an entrepreneur is where we should place a comma. Failure does not mean we stop trying, it means we take the lessons we learned from it and apply them to our next attempt.

The next time you’re tempted to label failure as a bad thing, filter the “failure” through these three misconceptions and reframe it. Reapproaching failure without shame but instead with a learning mentality is a game changer. For example Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, shared that her father would ask them everyday, “What did you fail at today?” to realign what failure meant. Failing means trying new things!

So, what did you fail at today?