Career – Lessons From Failed Business Ventures
Sometimes the journey of entrepreneurship includes losing a huge sum of money or having to return to full-time employment. In such circumstances, the lessons are often more valuable than what has been lost!
Among her list of achievements, Letty Ngobeni can count winning many top awards in property, and even recognition by Munghana Lonene FM as a role model for women in business.
But, one of her biggest accomplishments is recovering from the failure of a business. When she decided to buy into a food franchise, Ngobeni felt confident that it would work out. After all, she had had a knack for entrepreneurship for most of her life.
“My entrepreneurial journey started early, where I sold chicken feet at school and in the community. As a teacher, I had a side job selling magwinya (vetkoek) and plastic salad bowls, and established a backyard vegetable garden where I sold produce to the community,” she shares.
Yet, despite her experience, financial acumen and strong work ethic, Ngobeni ended up having to close the business in 2010.
Based in Alberton Mall, the restaurant initially seemed promising. But, after years of creative attempts to keep it afloat, the monthly expenses were higher than revenue, and she had to close the doors.
Looking back, Ngobeni says she now knows that she hadn’t conducted due diligence and investigated both the business model and specific franchise thoroughly. While it was a terrible experience, this failure yielded some benefit. In her next entrepreneurial ventures, that included Integrico Facilities Management as well as catering and events business Mndhavazi, Ngobeni has benefitted from her past challenges.
“The lessons from the failure were turned into positives,” she says.
IT HAPPENS
Entrepreneurship is filled with many obstacles – some big and some small. Whenever you’re facing decisions, such as which services or products to include or omit, your choices have the potential to backfire. Every decision could possibly be right or wrong.
The wrong ones offer an opportunity to learn, rather than a reason to quit, says Mothepa Ndumo, CEO of Higher Self Career and Executive Coaching.
“Failure is an entrepreneur’s reallife MBA. You will deal with situations that business school cannot prepare you for.”
When you register your company, design your logos and print your business cards or look for office space; you are in school, Ndumo says.
“You will experience long and short-learning curves as well as some exhilarating highs and devastating lows. This comes with the territory, and cannot be negotiated or bargained away. You have to ‘pay’ your school fees.”
Entrepreneurs often feel that their hardships are unique and rare. Success stories relay only the highlights of entrepreneurship, and very rarely, all the missteps, pivots and losses that led to triumph. Realising that failure is common can help you feel less isolated. It is also important to extract insight from difficulties; to examine what they are telling you about your product.
“When the market gives you feedback (which is also known as failure), don’t take it personally. Rather get yourself to a place where you can emotionally and mentally look at the data objectively. If you do that, you will extract a lot and can then adjust and scale accordingly,” Ndumo adds.
Sometimes, this analysis will lead you to make changes to your existing business or show that it is not viable.
FRAMING FOR THE FUTURE
Akhona Bashe once reached this painful conclusion. She had a business that was selling organic masks that she passionately believed in. They had done wonders for her skin, and so she wanted more people to have the same uplifting experience. However, sales were slow, and Bashe ran out of cash. She was forced to close the business, and move back in with her parents. She recalls feeling like a failure.
“I felt as if entrepreneurship was not for me because there were many schools of thought that said you were either one or the other. I thought I was an employee, which was tough for me because I had always considered myself entrepreneurial.”
This was a difficult time. But as she started thinking through what had happened, Bashe realised that the lesson was actually not personal, and that it was, in fact, about the specific business.
“Entrepreneurs are dreamers, and their expectations need to be more realistic. You aim too high, and when you miss, you feel like a failure. But, you need to have a tolerance for things not going your way. And, that is not failure.”
Bashe decided to no longer believe the lie that entrepreneurship was not for her. Turning the new positive belief into action, she decided to prove the lie wrong by starting another business. She bought into The Treat SA, an affordable beauty franchise.
Her willingness to take on the risk of entrepreneurship again is critical for success in business. Seeing failure as a lesson rather than a personal indictment is important.
Zuki Mzozoyana, who runs 21st Century Humans and Innovator Gap Year Academy, is passionate about skills development and education geared towards the new economy. In her personal life, and through coaching other young entrepreneurs, she’s accepted that failure is inevitable. Instead, she now knows that it’s actually a silver lining.
“Experienced entrepreneurs understand that failure is an opportunity to reinvent yourself and your business. You create a solution to a problem a group of people face – and that’s your market. If they don’t receive it the way you have packaged it, you have not failed.
“It just means that you have to repackage it in a way that they can receive and understand it. But, a lot of people give up at that point, instead of pivoting.” Mzozoyana admits that this is a mistake she’s made in the past. Having learnt this lesson the hard way, she now looks for the lesson from the difficulty and then applies it to the future; believing that there is always a way forward.
“The golden rule I now know is that failure is part of the journey to success. It is not the end of the road,” she concludes.