You Are Going To Fail

Yes you, and me, and that other guy. And that is ok. But you know one thing that is dead? This mantra:

“I’m an entrepreneur, and I just have to push through all the naysayers out there, because, hey, I’m are an entrepreneur and that is what we do.”

If people are constantly telling you that failure is imminent, then:

• You can’t clearly pitch your idea. You don’t know how to frame your idea in ways the person you are talking to can understand. You need to be a brilliant storyteller with a concise vision. You also may have built a product that is hard to use and not friendly to the people trying to help out, so replace this with ‘you can’t clearly execute on your idea.’
• You’re uncoachable. That person saying you are going to fail has probably seen a few mistakes you have made, pointed them out, and witnessed you ignore them or make more mistakes. You are leaving by a track record of being non responsive more so than ‘fighting through the naysayers.’
• You don’t know your customers. This is a really nice way of saying ‘you might rethink starting up that Google competitor.’
• You don’t have enough smart friends. Crude, but yes, get better friends, or learn to have some business friends that understand your product and don’t say things like ‘you write on that blob thing all day.’

Feel free to fail fast, take a job out of the industry of startups for a while, listen to customers, friends, online media for trends and come back stronger.

If a mass majority of people are telling you that you will fail in this day in age, you haven’t engaged the right mentors and you haven’t listened to your customers. The crude mantra of ‘your doing it wrong’ is more fitting.