“Mistaken About Making Mistakes” By Poornima Vijayashanker
I see this behavior too often amongst first time founders and entrepreneurs. I will admit to having done this myself. The recognition of a mistake, is OK. But it leading to a harsh criticism of oneself can stifle creativity and the passion one has for their idea. Sometimes we are mistaken about making mistakes.
…
When I started BizeeBee, I thought that I would just know how to do everything. After all, I had just left a successful startup.
I had originally planned to launch it as a product for yoga studios. My co-founder at the time was adamant about going after a bigger market. I was also eager to please, so I followed her lead, and decided to focus on creating a solution for all small businesses.
We launched the alpha version of our product in August 2010. About a week after launching we heard crickets. I didn’t know what to do. My co-founder announced she was leaving. Moments later one of my engineers was also displeased with our progress and culture, he threatened to leave. I was stuck and completely burnt out. I wanted to move forward, but just didn’t know how.
…
Comparison and expectation are the key causes of self-criticism. We compare ourselves to the success of others, without acknowledging or even knowing how many times someone else might have “screwed-up” on their path to success. And we have certain expectations of ourselves. “I should have known better,” is the negative self-talk running through the mind’s of someone actively flogging themselves.
But it is rather impossible to be able to forsee all that will happen. We have to be comfortable in making decisions based on the knowledge and experience we have at the time. Sure we can continue to analyze and research options, but in order to make progress we have to be decisive; time-boxing our decision making process. Otherwise, we’ll forever be stuck in the analysis-paralysis phase.
…
I kept comparing the lack of success I was experiencing to the successful startup I had just left. I felt like I should “know better”.
At some point I stopped flogging myself. And instead learned to back off, by taking a full week off to rest and recover.
After the week of rest, I came back calm, and back in control. I organized the remaining members of the team, and we got started on a plan.
Within 3 months we rebuilt our alpha, and launched it exclusively to yoga studios with paying customer the day we went live!
…
Yes there are some mistakes that come at a great cost. Barring the loss of a human life, I’d say that most mistakes are reparable. In fact, one of the goals of entrepreneurship is to build up a reserve of resiliency!
It is understandable and acceptable that if we repeatedly make a mistake we may want to rethink our ability to make proper decisions. But barring this case, we have to embrace our mistake: by taking the time to introspect our decision-making process, internalize the feelings we experienced as part of the mistake, and finally let-go and move on!
Mind you some mistakes have to be made and internalized in order for us to learn, grow, and as way of feeding our gut so that in the future it will save us!
The mistake I had made with BizeeBee did cost me time, but I told myself it was OK that I had gone down the wrong path. From that point on I’d learn to trust my gut, and not use previous experiences as the standard or indicator for future success.
I’m curious to hear about the last mistake you made, and how you dealt with it?
