Struggle is part of entrepreneurship

So recently, I was having discussion with a friend (gist) and in the very interesting gist, we happened to touch career and business struggles, how people hide these struggles that sometimes lead to failure, how we all don’t want to show it, not let people see it, don’t want people to think we are failures because we have few failed projects or a lot, we just want to be seen as that guy or that lady who always win.

When I got back home, I thought about my personal struggles and failures, I thought about my business struggles and failures, how these failures had made me the woman I am, I also looked at the lessons learned from it and wonder if successful people share their struggles and failures or not and I wanted to know how many times the companies we call successful failed at one project or the other, what they had to do to forge ahead.

I went online and I saw so many stories, then I wonder how come we only remember these organizations’ success stories and a lot of new startups use them as a model. the most striking of the stories I saw online was the Google graveyard, yes! You read that correctly, Google has a graveyard of failed projects.

For a company like Google, you will agree with me that they have resources, both human and financial resources, yet they have failed projects, keep in mind that Google is a successful company with successful projects too.

So dear entrepreneur, work hard, work smart, aim high, dream but don’t pressurize yourself, when things go south don’t beat yourself too hard., it’s okay if that idea didn’t fly at all, it’s okay if it looked like it’s about to take off but didn’t, it’s okay if it was flying and crash-landed, yes it will be painful, time, money, energy etc. would have been expended, so it’s totally okay, if it hurts, but pick the lessons from it and run with it, pivot if you can, shut down, hibernate, rebrand or re-strategize but  don’t quit. Keep going, you will have few failed projects but if you persevere, you will definitely have successful project(s). When you become that big brand, remember to share your struggles as well as your success, don’t hide a part of you, part of your journey

XoXo Whoopy Yun.