I was recently asked to participate in Rob Rammuny’s Weekly ‘Entrepreneurs Project’ where he asked this question: If you were only allowed to offer an entrepreneur one piece of advice, what would it be and why?

Interesting question and some great replies from a range of online entrepreneurs.  My reply is below.

“If I were to offer entrepreneurs one piece of advice, it would be to fail and fail often.

Most people are scared of it, society at large despises it, but the plight of entrepreneurs is to challenge status quo and whether we like it or not, that challenge comes with a huge fail rate. Accept that failing along the way is part of the process, embrace it, learn from it and push forward. More often than not, an ‘overnight success’ is years in the making and the result of many failed attempts.

Why is this so important..? Because failure is hard, and even more so for entrepreneurs who tend to channel ‘idealist optimism’ to have believed it was possible in the first place. The trick is learning to embrace it as part of your success process. So go ahead, roll up your sleeves and act… if it doesn’t work, re-evaluate and try again.  Thomas Edison swore by this practice.”