A Mindset Like Learning Golf
What mindset should an entrepreneur have in failure?
In failure, an entrepreneur has to have the same mindset I’ve developed while learning how to play golf. Failure is not just something that we have to get through when it happens.
Failure is a necessary part of the process. Just ask anyone who’s ever tried to play golf.
You’ll never find someone who never hit a terrible shot. In fact, even pro golfers say golf is a game of misses. The question becomes, how little can you miss?
Failure Helps Entrepreneurs Separate
When I fail and create something nobody likes or something that doesn’t make any money, that failure is actually so much better for my soul than the successes. The failure helps me separate myself from the art or from the business.
Failure helps me realize, “Yes, I’m creating this business, but that’s not who I am. I am not the brand.”
At the end of the day, when we approach God, he’s not going to call us by our brand name and the thing we built, he won’t call us by our titles … entrepreneur, founder, artist … he’s going to call us by our name.
When I fail, I adjust my mindset to remember that all this is going to get stripped away. And then when failure comes, my mindset helps me embrace it instead of run away from it and say “What can I learn from this?”
Mike Donehey - Finding God's Life for My Will // OCEAN Conference 2019
Nataisa Malaihollo has a great take on on the topic of Mindset involving hope in her speech at OCEAN’s 2019 Conference. Below is part of her talk that is so valuable for us to grasp.
I believe the most important mindset for an entrepreneur is just to have hope and have faith in the process. Hopelessness is the worst thing that could happen to an entrepreneur. I have a lot of founder friends, and sometimes the biggest step that you can take is getting out of bed in the morning. Sometimes everything’s going wrong and you don’t even want to get out of bed. You want to check your emails. You don’t want to do any work because you feel like nothing that you can do is going to fix the issues. You’re not making enough traction. You’re not making enough strides.
You don’t even want to work on the company anymore. That is a lack of hope. You just don’t believe anything that you do. Is there anything the world is going to change your trajectory? You have to believe and find whatever, do whatever you can, whether that’s going to church, that’s reading the Bible, that’s praying, to make sure that you always have hope. There are days that that hope is just a little flame. That’s enough to get me going and still going. I would just say do whatever you can to find inspiration, find hope, and have faith.
Natasia Malaihollo - Low on Cash. Full on Faith. My Startup Story. // OCEAN Conference 2019
Mike Donehey is a singer and songwriter as part of the band Tenth Avenue North. He joined OCEAN Programs on stage at the 2019 OCEAN Conference. Learn more about Mike and his work at mikedonehey.com.
Natasia Malaihollo is the CEO and co-founder of Wyzerr. Natasai has won multiple business and innovation awards for her customer feedback work with Wyzerr. She currently splits her time between her hometown of Irvine, CA and Cincinnati, OH, where Wyzerr is based.
