Treat failure as a lesson on how not to approach achieving a goal, and then use that learning to improve your chances of success when you try again. Failure is only the end if you decide to stop.
Richard BransonRead
If you don't take risks you won't achieve anything.
Interpretation
Taking risks is essential for achieving success.
This quote by Richard Branson emphasizes the importance of taking risks in order to accomplish goals and realize potential. Without stepping outside of comfort zones and embracing uncertainty, one is unlikely to achieve significant outcomes or breakthroughs in life.
In practice
In a motivational speech to young entrepreneurs.
Treat failure as a lesson on how not to approach achieving a goal, and then use that learning to improve your chances of success when you try again. Failure is only the end if you decide to stop.
It's a common misconception that money is every entrepreneur's metric for success. It's not, and nor should it be.
Some 80% of your life is spent working. You want to have fun at home; why shouldn't you have fun at work?
Values cannot be speedily forgotten if it is inconvenient or commercially expedient. Values have to have meaning and longevity; otherwise they are valueless. You cannot embrace innovation up to a point or only sometimes. Branding demands commitment; commitment to continual re-invention; striking cords with people to stir their emotions; and commitment to imagination. It is easy to be cynical about such things, much harder to be successful.
Please donβt get hung up on this question of whether you need to have experience in an industry before you launch your startup.
What's the most critical factor in any business decision you'll ever have to make? Basically, it boils down to this question: If this all crashes, will it bring the whole house tumbling down like a pack of cards? One business matra remains embedded in my brain - protect the downside.
Success is not built on success. It's built on failure. It's built on frustration. Sometimes its built on catastrophe.
Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.
To invest successfully, you need not understand beta, efficient markets, modern portfolio theory, option pricing or emerging markets. You may, in fact, be better off knowing nothing of these. That, of course, is not the prevailing view at most business schools, whose finance curriculum tends to be dominated by such subjects. In our view, though, investment students need only two well-taught courses - How to Value a Business, and How to Think About Market Prices.
All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the base of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
It feels like my hard work has paid off, but at the same time, I still have the impostor, you know, syndrome. I still feel like I'm going to wake up, and everybody's going to see me for the hack I am.
Our emphasis is on execution, not winning.
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