Lessons Learned From Failing
Ever since I can remember I have wanted to own and operate my own successful company. The only problem in my quest to gain wealth and respect was within what I wanted my business to be. What I wanted to sell. What service I wanted to provide. These are among the most basic questions that any entrepreneur should, and does ask himself. I’ve done many things in life that have sparked the interest of entrepreneurship. Things as simple as trying to sell cotton candy (that melted in the sun) at a friends garage sale to my most recent venture and failure.
After getting into the sport of paintballing and with my interest in business I thought “hey, why not start my own paintball company?” As every entrepreneur knows, you have to be passionate about what you’re doing or you may as well have never started. This goes for anything, from playing a sport, to getting up in the morning. I was both interested in paintballing and thought it could be a good idea for a small business. So I filed the paper work and did what was necessary to be legal in the State of Utah to own a business (mind you I was only newly 16 at the time). I hired a company in Romania to make me a paintball website, got some suppliers, made my first significant order and away I went. I had my own online empire of paintball goods to sell to the whole wide world! I had it made!
….I waited, and waited. I advertised on some sites, a sale or two came here and there. Then I slowly lost the passion. I still liked to paintball, but didn’t really have time or will power to put into it anymore. So here I am. A year or so later, a dollar or two short, and a lot of experience I would have never had, had I not embarked on the journey in the first place. Right now the website is idle. I had plans to have another go at it by switching the name from Front Lines Paintball to Black Taktics Paintball. The website right now is http://www.frontlinespaintball.com/. I still have all of my paintball suppliers and my state business license, but no cash and a lack of desire to give it another try.I haven’t totally given up though, just on the paintball company idea.Now back on topic.
I’ll give a simple list of lessons I feel that I learned from my paintball company failure.
(in no order)
1. How to contract out work.
2. How to apply for a state and city business license and who to contact regarding the legal info.
3. How to fill out dealer applications and be accepted as well as denied.
4. How to make myself appear bigger than I really am. (A critical step to surviving)
5. How to configure a website and eventually how to build my own website.
6. How to accept defeat nicely.
7. How to laugh off others criticism and put downs. lol. They hurt so bad. “How much money have you made in the last month Jeremy? None? That’s what I thought”
My Reply: ….laugh, smile, stfu. Continue to be their friends. The world will turn in my favor when it turns on them for the worst. Good luck getting my sympathy guys. 
8. How to give criticism. ( dealing with company affairs)
9. Much more that I’ll bore you with some other time.
I hope you didn’t get out of this post that I simply gave up and moved on. I simply realized things weren’t working out in the paintball industry, took the knowledge I could and opened my ears for future opportunity.
My advice, don’t give up. Even if your business or school or whatever fails, don’t give up. You can quit, but don’t take it as a failure. Take it with a “Laugh, Smile, Stfu” and get on with life and work towards your next success. And even if that’s a failure. Repeat the process until something works. It will. That’s what I’m doing and I’m pretty optimistic about it.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
