Failing is the best way to learn something in my opinion. You come out the other end with a better knowledge of the market you entered, you end up knowing the to-dos and not-to-dos, you work out how things work and interact, you should have worked out where you went wrong, people you should have spoken to and deals you should have done.

After you fail you realise every area where you went wrong, and you should sit down and really think about it all, it’ll only better equip you for when you do it again, or something similar.

Starting projects or businesses isn’t just a ‘keep trying and one will eventually work’ situation, it’s more of a learning process, you do a few, fail, learn from it all, keep doing it and failing until you’re in a position to have a good go at something, a real opportunity will present itself and when it does, you’ll have the knowledge and experience from before to make you somewhat of an expert in the area.

Maybe that’s a good idea for a site, submit your failure, write down what you did, where you went wrong and make it public so other people can learn and benefit from your disaster.

Then again, maybe that’ll be a failure too…

Personally I started my first dot com when I was 15, it failed obviously, but not long after I started another, which I sold a long time ago now, that business was profitable, and still is today. I started it when I was 16, ran it till I was 18, employed over 10 people, sold it and moved on to my next venture.

That was my first success in the internet industry, at 16 years of age before the dot com ‘boom’ and its inevitable ‘burst’ later on. Since then I’ve had other successes and many more failures. I think I average about 1 in 10, for every 1 success there’s 10 failures.

I don’t think that’s a bad number, I think it’s a result of starting something with the interest of fun and for something to do – personal interest, rather than trying to start a business to turn a profit. I rarely start a ‘business’ everything I start is a ‘project’ in my eyes, it’s something new and interesting, I’m doing it for some fun, to learn something new, and because I’m really interested in the idea I’ve come up with.

I’m an ideas kind of man, I have a million ideas, brainstorm nonstop, I plan, map, document everything, I’ve researched so many things it’s not funny, my knowledge of the internet is extensive due to the enormity of the things I’ve researched over the years, but I love it, I love doing it, I enjoy starting new projects and watching what happens to them.

I think I can honestly say I rarely care if something fails, I have so many other projects on the go, or in waiting that if one fails, there’s another to fill its gap. I don’t have a fear of something failing as long as my overall net revenue isn’t diminished in the process.