Entrepreneurs and small business owners must embrace failure. Why is it so important? Because failure delivers hard-hitting, often painful lessons that mentors or coaches can’t impart, and success won’t teach. Reflecting on my business setbacks, I realized that firsthand failure, with its intense and humbling reality, leaves a lasting impression that’s far more impactful than reading about another entrepreneur’s mistakes

Example, in 2010, M & E Painting, made the INC 5000 list as one of the fastest growing companies in the US. Sounds like a win right? WRONG! That year we lost A LOT of money. We spent more than we made in chasing the dreams of expanding our name, brand, and top line revenue all over the state of Colorado.

Now, I have read articles of entrepreneurs that grew too fast, lost lots of money, and what they did about it, the lessons they learned, and how they overcame this adversity. So why did I not learn from their mistakes? While reading about the stories of others in third person, there is a disconnect from you as an entrepreneur going through it in first person. However, going through this myself, live and in person, rooted the experience for me much more deeply than reading about somebody else doing it ever could.

Failure teaches you what not to do. It also acknowledges your efforts, providing the grace to learn from missed targets. When you encounter failure, remember to forgive yourself, absorb the lessons, and move forward with new attempts. Embrace failure as part of the journey towards achieving your ambitious goals and dreams.

Challenging and encouraging you to be brave, be bold, be courageous, and be vulnerable. Go after the big goals, big dreams and make sure you fail and learn along the way.

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Remember three things:

I love you.

I believe in you.

You’ve got this.

Now go get it!