A couple of weeks ago, a rodinhooder wrote-in saying lately our stories on trhs have become “soppy”. There are too many failure stories. There are too many struggle stories. There are too many “startups need advice & help” stories.
I agree. They are soppy simply because there isn’t anything sexy about being an entrepreneur! A lot of youngsters find the idea of being a “startup dude” hip and happening and the “in” thing. But when they read these real life entrepreneurial journeys they realise being an entrepreneur is anything but sexy! It involves sweat, sacrifice, sleepless nights and a whole lot of other scary experiences that most of you already know about.
Quite a few rodinhooders have shared their failure stories with numerous learnings for us all. On trhs as well as at the last Open House in Mumbai. To us, these are Learning Stories. They all have some common ingredients – courage, the ability to take risks, persistence, pursuing a dream, the ability to learn & play multiple roles, to be egoless, to admit you are wrong, to ask for help, to identify problems, to realise every idea sometimes is not always a workable business, etc, etc. Perhaps,the toughest part of being an entrepreneur is to let go. To have the maturity to sell a business or shut it down and move on. And the spirit to not only celebrate such a failure, but to say, “I will survive and start up again!”
Each “failed” journey has valuable lessons for every entrepreneur. Which we need to recognise…
Saluting your spirit of Entrepreneurship, we now have a dedicated section for “failure stories”, called Celebrate Failure! As you know, Alok mentioned how he celebrates failure at the India Today Conclave. An idea, which immediately got recognised as one of the 5 Ideas to Change India!
“I celebrate failure”, says Alok Kejriwal
Speaking at the India Today Conclave 2013, the young entrepreneur says there is nothing wrong in aspiring to be a rich person.
If you’ve already shared a “failure story” on trhs – share the link below as a comment – I’ll ensure it is moved to the new category. And if you’ve been thinking about sharing a “failure story” feel free to celebrate it with us!
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If you haven’t read these Celebrating Failure stories, yet… pls do!
I have failed but I’m not a failure
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Some trivia – while googling for an appropriate image for ‘Celebrate/celebrating Failure’ I stumbled upon Alok’s pix (above) and this video link (which can’t be embedded here). There are a couple of other photos from therodinhoods as well! Which made me realise we don’t need to borrow ribbon or balloon or party hat images to depict “celebrating failure”….
🙂