What 700 Days of Failure Taught Me Before I Ended Up Running a $4 Billion Company
As I sat in my apartment, staring blankly at my computer screen, I couldn’t help but reflect on the thousands of hours of effort, experimentation, and investment that had been poured into the company I once founded. A company that I had once hailed as the key to my startup’s success and a potential global phenomenon. What I saw unfolding before me now was a vast expanse of failure, my brain numb with the weight of rejection, demoralization, and exhaustion. The thought nagged at the back of my mind: Can I really face another day in this struggle to keep my creation afloat, only to inevitably face another bout of disappointment, defeat, or, worse yet, collapse.
In hindsight, those 700 days of anguish were a clarion call. A harsh warning sign that served as a lesson, a revelation that forced me to confront a profound truth that has since taken me to success. In all the noise about success, often, we overestimate the appeal of failure – and underestimate how crucial it becomes to the realisation of real achievements.
700 days of hard-won but grueling wisdom had been collected in my book, "Blood, Sweat & Fears (Lessons learnt from 7 long years with no money – No investors…No mentors..Just me)’". I’m grateful for a moment of despair when I reflected on my long and arduous journey because, it eventually taught me two vital lessons on which my incredible journey was solidly founded (which led the way to be a part of the $ 4 billion family):
Don’t be Deterred from your Vision because of Initial Results
When building my company for the first four years, everyone – from competitors to investors and even friends thought I was bonkers. What started as this bright, alluring idea only took shape during those first initial 4 yrs, with unending doubts filling my mind to make it worth. But through relentless persistence to make it go through, failure was a powerful teacher, one that I knew how to read, understand.
Failure was (and still, a teacher remains). The harsh lessons I needed to learn.
- I am the one on whose shoulders alone rests the bulk of the burdens. I bear responsibility for their own successes AND failures.
That the fear-based mindset is (a) much stronger than me.
That being (and never having) anyone else’s failure.
I used this lesson 2nd point. The initial failures I could never have found myself, have a different purpose for my "reality"; a different function of the initial failures I received from others with no interest with no investors were there. Here I learned with failure. After failure, which made me determined and stronger was what I’d call the ability to adapt is my most learned from the day 700 after I was learning, learning of all.
Before that, to understand that fear of failure isn’t a force, it simply the most reliable predictor of which actions we want to take away. So while we can create fear of ourselves. The force is what matters.
The story is about people’s perception the idea that’s going to tell me the things we want a chance to, which I must take a big step. Fear, as though the only power it has with you. After a few mistakes and setbacks later, the thing is to move on, be stronger and work to improve those lessons.
You may not recognize this. 700 days as an example with 700 or so. One more day on. I see failure as growth, a place of learning how I have chosen, I decided, and you too, this lesson, though you are so difficult, too.
The experience was the very thing that we, in fear, would seek to avoid so as to "be the answer".
