Transcripts

John L. Herman, author of the book The Innkeeper Tales, says failure is more often our companion than success so perhaps we need to be better at failing.

I own twenty-one companies; fifteen made money and were very successful, six completely failed. But I didn't look at them as failures because what I learned was worth more than what I thought I would make. So you have to value the failure for the experience it gives you for future efforts.

A great example, says John, is Milton Hershey.

He failed five times in the candy business in three different cities: New York, Chicago, and somewhere in Pennsylvania before he finally hit on the Hershey bar. So I tell people if they've just had a business failure, you might only have four more to go before you reach success, like Milton Hershey.

All successful people have failed at something, and it's all in how you look at it.

And I look at entrepreneurs who make it as people who understand that success feels much better than wallowing in the failure. So, they immediately move on and start working on something else. And that's why I say, how to fail successfully means you've got to learn that that is going to happen and you have to close the chapter and move on and do another thing.

Tomorrow, what it means to be good at failure - I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.