My Mistakes and Failures that You Can Learn From

This post is sponsored by Visa Business and all content is the opinion of the writer.

No one makes it in business without having their own share of failures and mistakes. I of course am no exception either. With over 17 years under my belt since I started making money online back while I was in high school, I certainly have a lot of stories to tell. Many of them are great and some not so great.

While I’d like to say I have some amazingly horrible failure stories to tell you where I was completely broke and ended up chugging through disasters and made massive wealth overnight, that simply isn’t the case… though I certainly do have some stories to tell.

Expect the Unexpected

The biggest rule in this game of business and life is to expect the unexpected. What may be you best moment or day in life can quickly be shattered by your worst.

I’ve had my share of horrible business disasters where I wasn’t paid by companies or had legal issues that were complete garbage, but none of them compare to what you may come across in your real life.

Let’s take Super Storm Sandy for example… this damn storm came out of no where and pretty much wiped out our whole area. We didn’t move back into our house until just about a month ago. This meant I no longer had my office and my business became a second priority as managing all of the house issues, insurance, contractors and everything else you can imagine became a full time job.

The picture below was from outside our front door. This was about 12 hours after the flood started and the water had only gone down about a foot or two from it’s high.

We ended up having to live with my parents for a couple weeks, then shared a place with my brother in law until we could finally get a six month rental an hour away. Long story short… losing a few dollars on an ad campaign or what seems like a big deal one day is piddly squat when something like this comes around.

The GOOD this is that I do have my own business and was able to run the whole thing from a small kitchen table we had in our six month rental.

Constant Failure Brings Success

One of the biggest problems that the internet marketing industry has is that it’s very one sided. Everyone shares their stories of success and no one really knows about all of the failures there were that lead up to that success. No one makes money over night and no one stays in this business for years without a whole book load of failed stories to tell about.

I fail all the time.. I fail every week… heck I fail everyday!

This industry is all about failing. It’s the few times that you hit success and run with it that count.

But guess what… all successful people have failed, and here’s just a few examples!

• 26 – How many times Tim Ferris’s book “The 4 Hour Work Week” was rejected by publishers.
• 1,009 – The amount of times Colonel Sanders who just started KFC was turned down when he tried to sell his fried chicken recipe.
• 5,126 – How many times James Dyson created failed prototypes of his vacuum cleaner before succeeding.

The Day to Day Operations of Running Your Own Business

As mentioned earlier, the day to day operations of any business can quickly creep up on you and bring the unexpected.

I’ve always had the mentality to run my business as I’d like to be perceived and keep it as clean and legitimate as possible, but when you are dealing with millions of potential emails, visitors and leads… well, you never know what might come your way.

This includes everything from…

• having someone show up at your house with a legal documents serving you because some stupid program put documents from another site on yours
• getting cease and desist letters in the mail from well known brands and companies
• random emails from people always asking for money or trying to weasel you out of money for any reason they can think of
• having your mailing lists settings changes from a “mailing only” list to a “discussion” list and paying for the difference

As bad a some of this stuff may seem, I always made sure that I did the right thing. Which in the end still means that bad things can happen to anyone, you just need to stick through it, take care of it and move on.

These certainly won’t be the last of my problems, but I would never give up the life and opportunity I have. It takes a special kind of person to be able to run their own business and continually battle with the good and the bad, and we are those people!

The Spirit of Entrepreneurs

It takes a special type of person to handle the risk and commitment that comes with building a business from the ground up. Just from the few examples I’ve pointed out above, you never know what each day will bring you. With the sadness of failure comes the joys of success! We are a special breed and Visa has created an awesome entrepreneurial infographic that I’ve shared with you below.

I am blogging on behalf of Visa Business and received compensation for my time from Visa for sharing my views in this post, but the views expressed here are solely mine, not Visas. Visithttps://facebook.com/visasmallbiz to take a look at the reinvented Facebook Page: Well Sourced by Visa Business. The Page serves as a space where small business owners can access educational resources, read success stories from other business owners, engage with peers, and find tips to help businesses run more efficiently. Every month, the Page will introduce a new theme that will focus on a topic important to a small business owners success. For additional tips and advice, and information about Visas small business solutions, follow @VisaSmallBiz and visit https://visa.com/business.