What If I Take the Risk
and Fail?
-Mark Zuckerberg
-Mark Zuckerberg
Sept 7, 2024
The Biggest Fear Nowadays people are having that What if take Risks and Fail, as we know Most of the 1% of Successful People in the World Say that Take Risks to be Successful.
Let me Tell You My own Story Of Taking a Risk and failing but the learnings I had got from my failure are helping me Now also after 5 years…
Five years ago, when I was in college, I had a tough choice to make. I really wanted to study for CA (Chartered Accountancy) while finishing my graduation. But I kept thinking, What if I don’t succeed? I was worried that if I failed in CA, I’d mess up my graduation too. I might end up barely passing in Graduation and not really learning anything from either.
Even though I was scared, I decided to take the risk and start my CA course. I studied hard for my first CA exam (the foundation level), but when the results came, I had failed. Feeling disappointed, I tried again. And again, I failed.
Since the foundation exam happens every three months, six months had already gone by, and I was behind in my college studies. So, I decided to quit CA and focus only on my graduation. At first, I thought I had made a mistake, but something surprising happened.
Even though I quit CA, the things I had studied during those six months started helping me in my graduation. Many of the topics in both courses were similar, and even though I hadn’t focused on my college subjects, I found that I understood them well because of my CA preparation. Before every exam, I ended up teaching the topics to my friends, and we all passed together. I realized that my CA studies weren’t wasted — they had actually helped me succeed in my graduation.
A year later, I decided to do an MBA, and I had to prepare for the MH-CET entrance exam. To my surprise, the aptitude questions in the exam were easy for me because I had already studied those topics in CA. Without needing any coaching classes, I practiced at home and scored 80% on the exam.
Even in my MBA classes, that risk I took years ago kept helping me. We had regular sessions on aptitude skills, which are needed to get a job. While my classmates struggled, I found the problems easy because I had already learned them during my CA days.
But that wasn’t the only risk I took. In my first year of post-graduation, I decided to start trading stocks. I would trade during class, watching my money go up and down, which made it hard to focus on anything else. I wasn’t paying attention to lectures, but I was learning a lot about trading. At first, I made a lot of mistakes and lost money.
But after a year, I had learned so much from my failures that I understood how to invest wisely. I figured out how to make profits from long-term and swing trading, which means buying shares for a short time and selling them for a profit. Now, I can confidently earn 15–20% every month from my investments.
1. Elon Musk:
- Early Failure: Musk’s first company, Zip2, didn’t do as well as he hoped.
- Lesson Learned: He learned how to run a business, develop technology, and stay flexible.
- How He Applied It: At PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX, Musk used these lessons to focus on innovation and adjusting to market needs, which helped him succeed in online payments, electric cars, and space travel.
2. Steve Jobs:
- Early Failure: His company, NeXT, didn’t succeed in the market.
- Lesson Learned: Jobs learned how to make better products and understand what customers wanted.
- How He Applied It: When he returned to Apple, he used this knowledge to create popular products like the iPhone and iPad, focusing on great design and user experience.
3. Jeff Bezos:
- Early Failure: Amazon had a rough start, facing many problems as it grew.
- Lesson Learned: Bezos realized the importance of keeping customers happy and making the business run smoothly.
- How He Applied It: He expanded Amazon beyond books, improved customer service, and made the company more efficient, turning it into the e-commerce giant it is today.
4. Richard Branson:
- Early Failure: His magazine and early music business had lots of issues.
- Lesson Learned: Branson learned how to be flexible and research his markets carefully.
- How He Applied It: He used these skills to grow the Virgin brand into different industries like airlines and telecoms by staying open to change and new opportunities.
5. Howard Schultz:
- Early Failure: Schultz’s early experience in the coffee business didn’t go well.
- Lesson Learned: He realized that creating a special experience for customers was key.
- How He Applied It: At Starbucks, Schultz focused on making stores inviting and delivering high-quality products, helping the brand grow worldwide.
6. Sara Blakely:
- Early Failure: She faced many rejections in her early sales jobs.
- Lesson Learned: Blakely learned the value of persistence and understanding what customers really need.
- How She Applied It: She created Spanx, a new kind of shapewear, by solving problems that women had with existing products. Her determination helped her build a hugely successful company.
In each case, these successful people used the lessons from their early struggles to make better decisions and build their businesses. Their failures taught them how to succeed later on.
So here’s what We learned: Taking risks doesn’t mean you lose everything when you fail. Even if you don’t succeed right away, the lessons you learn from your failures can help you in the future. They can even put you ahead of most people who haven’t taken the same chances.