For entrepreneurs Monica Wulff, Tim Lea, and Karen Lawson, failure isn’t something that we should be afraid of.
Rather, these three innovators see failure as something that we can learn from.
‘Failure is subjective’
Monica Wulff, the chief executive and founder of Startup Muster, the largest survey of Australian startups, says that we can’t always let others determine what failure is.
She left a well-paying corporate job with great future prospects, something she says society deemed as successful, to take on the role of CEO with her start up business full time.
“I was incredibly unhappy, but others would have deemed that I was being quite successful, I wasn’t failing,” Wulff told Insight.
“At the end of the day you’re living your life and do it the way you want to do it.”
And while she may have said goodbye to what was viewed as a stable career, she couldn’t be happier.
“I’m running a business that I’m so proud of and that is what makes me feel like I’m succeeding in life.”
“At the end of the day you’re living your life and do it the way you want to do it.”
‘If you make some screw ups that’s the way life is’
Tim Lea is a man of many talents. Unsatisfied by a career in corporate finance Lea started his own business setting up an internet café-bar and restaurant and a web design house.
After selling that he then followed his passion for screenwriting and directed and co-produced an award winning feature film. This then led him to start his own business Veredictumio tackling the issue of film piracy and theft.
What doesn’t kill you makes youy stronger
It is one of those things that if you experience difficulties you only grow personally, as well as a business person you grow because then you know you won’t make those same mistakes again.
“If you make some screw ups that’s the way life is, it’s how you bounce back from it that counts.”
Placing a high value on happiness leads us to see sadness as a failure. Source: EyeEm/Getty Images
‘The corporate world needs to be compassionate about failure’
Karen Lawson, chief executive of Slingshot, which connects entrepreneurs with corporates, has seen both sides of the coin.
She has worked in both the corporate world and the start up space and believes there are budding entrepreneurs inside most large companies.
She says constraints of the corporate world however, including their fear of failure, often suppress innovation.
“There are many people that are entrepreneurs inside a corporation that want to do things differently but are told they can’t do it, there’s no budget for it,” Lawson told Insight.
“Many of them might actually start off trying to find different ways around a problem, maybe be a little bit Maverick and ask for forgiveness after and I think the compassion has to come there.”
Catch up on Insight's look at how people bounce back from failure, here:
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