Why grit matters and the importance of failing

I’m sure you’ve heard it before: About half of small businesses will have failed within the first five years.

The thing is, we get to rethink what “fail” means.

Remember that saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”?

Isn’t it funny that when it comes to starting a new business, entrepreneurs are expected to hit it out of the park the first time? 

Of course that’s unlikely. Of course most will fail. 

Of course the ones who succeed will do so because they’ve learned to pivot (“try”) again and again.

You can call this persistence. Commitment. Determination.

You can also call it grit. 

And whether your passion project is tied to a money-making goal or not, you’ll probably need some amount of it to see some level of success with it.

Case in point: One of my boys is an amazing artist. Anything he touches—pencil, paintbrush, camera, lego, building blocks—turns to gold. He makes magic with whatever he does. And he works at it. 

A few years ago (before COVID), we went to a Comic Con, and he struck up a chat with one of the presenting illustrators. I shared how he will draw an inch of a line and then throw the whole sheet of paper away and start a new one and how it drives me crazy.

“But you know, my man, don’t you? You know the line is just not right,” he said to my son with a knowing nod of his head.

As business coach Shanda Sumpter says in her book Core Calling: “We often think that challenges are fate or reasons to quit. Or we think that they are so big that what we are doing might not be right, and we give up. That is a faulty mindset.”

She goes on to write that if you can learn to roll with the moments of uncertainty that will come, you will get to your goal.

“If you begin a project, and then run into a brick wall, it tests your commitment to the project. An entrepreneur needs to follow a project all the way through to their goal; they must always hit their numbers.”

Shanda uses the example of one of her clients. She was struggling with her business, but Shanda she would not let her give up. Following through, Shanda explains, gave her client the opportunity to learn from her experience and evolve her business into the success story it now is.

Just like my son, it takes drawing the line over and over, in many different ways, to discover the perfect line that’s been waiting for you. That’s why grit matters, and why failing is an important part of almost every success story.