079 Why is failure so common in business?

Welcome to the Fail Forward podcast.

In this episode I talk about failure. 

As my podcast name suggests, this topic forms the building blocks to my content. It’s clearly close to my heart, I think the reason for that is because its so closely connected to business. 

All you ever hear is, “80% of businesses fail in the first five years”, or “1 in 5 businesses fail in their first year”. There seems to be a new statistic every week!

I take the view that this is due to a fundamental issue with the way society perceives failure. 

There’s no doubting its a negative word. 

In school children are taught that they’ve failed if they don’t pass their exams. In 2023, 32% of 16 year olds failed their GCSEs. Take a second to imagine what that installs in young people’s minds at an early age. 

One of the biggest things we should be teaching our children is that its OK to fail because it is a part of learning.

I wonder how many young people are left with a negative mindset when they leave school. They begin to let failure define them, rather than view it as something to learn from.

In this episode I explain that learning from multiple failures always becomes a positive. Not learning from them will compound into something catastrophic, such as a failed business. 

I invite you to have a listen and challenge what we’re conditioned to believe about failure. 

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