I Love Watching People Fail


I love entrepreneurs, and I love seeing them fail. Last year, my amazing wife started a furniture restoration business. Early on, she bought a ragged buffet table that she restored to magnificence. It wasn’t easy though. After many grueling hours she came to me frustrated that she had ruined it. My response, though probably ill timed, was “Awesome!” I was happy that she was failing. 

A few weeks later she visited a clients house to give them a quote on a piece of furniture. When she came home, she was sure got the job. She explained that she had learned a lot during all the struggles with her buffet table, and it helped her get the job. I wasn’t ready to die, so I held back the “I told you so.”

Success is a three step process. 1. Fail 2. Learn 3.  Implement. They must be done in order, and the more times you go through it, the more successful you will be.
For me, one of my greatest failures was my first employee. It was a disaster. He couldn’t use a tablet, smoked in front of my clients, wasn’t nearly as experienced as he led me to believe, and I wasn’t paying him nearly enough. We grew tired of each other pretty quickly and he quit. I was happy he left.
I failed on so many levels. I didn’t ask enough qualifying questions, I didn’t set expectations, and I didn’t value his time. There is a reason that experienced entrepreneurs say “hire slow, and fire fast”

I evaluated my hiring process, saw the faults, and learned to do better. The next employee I hired has been with me for over 5 years, and the one after that was with me for almost five years. 

My wife and I needed these initial failures (and of all the subsequent ones) to be successful in our businesses. Failures are never a waste of time, or money if you learn the something. The only time I don’t like watching other people fail is when then they don’t learn anything. That is, of course, the only real failure.