Here’s what’s on the menu today

• Failure - An Entrepreneur’s greatest asset

• Behind the scenes of overnight successes

• When the Business Bug Bites

"I want to be able to make sure that we have enough capital to survive at least three consecutive failures”

Nobody likes to hear about it, not in business or in their personal life. But this is ironic considering that throughout history, failure has always been humanity’s greatest asset. Science as we know it has been built on one principle - Trial and Error. Penicillin was an accidental discovery but anyone whose life was saved by it has every reason to be happy for what would have been a failure to the scientist who stumbled across the medicine.

Failure is a common theme in science as it is in entrepreneurship. Many successful entrepreneurs have had a stint with failure. The quote above was made by one of the wealthiest serial entrepreneurs of our time, Elon Musk, during the early stages of his third company, SpaceX. Musk is not new to failure. He has failed enough times to earn a spot in the Museum of Failure.

And he is not alone. Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates have all tasted failure in one way or another. Yet today, they are celebrated as successful entrepreneurs. The reason is that instead of giving up on their dreams, they turned their failures into springboards and launched to success with three steps - Learn, Adapt, and Grow.

Any entrepreneur can do this as well. Learn from your past failures, Adapt your strategies and plans accordingly, and apply what you know now to Grow your new venture. Many of what is tagged as industry secrets are simply lessons learned from failure. So stop seeing failure as a dead end, but consider it a Batch of Honor that is awarded to those who are courageous enough to Try.

“It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success”

The idea of overnight success is one that has led many entrepreneurs off the right path. If it takes too long to achieve, then perhaps it is not meant to be. I have no idea who ever thought success was an overnight event but the notion has been popularized by the media and wrongly associated with successful people whose success seemed to have happened suddenly.

But what the media and those who embrace the idea of overnight success overlook is that sudden success is an accumulation of repeated, exhausting, and often boring hard work done day in and day out for many months and sometimes years. No wonder those who experience overnight success always have a different perspective of what it means.

Here’s what popular footballer Lionel Messi said of his overnight success - “I stay early, and I stay late, day after day, year after year; it took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.” When asked about his “quick success”, Facebook’s Co-founder Dustin Moskovitz said, “If by overnight success you mean staying up and coding all night, every night for six years straight, then it felt quite tiring and stressful.”

Here’s some advice, don’t fall for the overnight success trap. True and lasting success is often the result of consistency and hard work that goes unnoticed, sometimes for many years. It reminds me of the Chinese Bamboo that needs to be watered daily for five years before any visible sign of growth is seen above the soil.

During those five years, the bamboo develops an extensive root system. So yes, it’s building but behind the veil, unseen by the farmer until it suddenly grows 80 feet in six weeks - “an overnight success.”

When the business bug bites!!!

Have you had a sudden urge to start a business? If yes, perhaps you’ve just been bitten by the business bug. I mean this literally. Toxoplasma Gondii is a parasite that is transmitted by cats and this research finding will knock your socks off. According to the researchers, people who are infested by the parasite have a lower risk threshold.

The research also revealed that countries with a higher prevalence of T. Gondii infestation had a higher entrepreneurial activity. A case in point is the United States where about 40 million people are suspected of being infected. So what does the parasite do? it lowers the fear threshold and increases risk tolerance.

Fear of failure is what stops many people in their tracks, preventing them from ever venturing into entrepreneurship. And honestly. there are no guarantees, we’ve seen even the brightest ideas fail for one reason or another. What then happens when a person is able to rid themselves of this fear? They are more than willing to take a leap of faith.

If you’ve been thinking of starting your own business but lack the motivation to do so, getting a T. Gondii may seem like a great idea at this point. But before you take that decision, there’s one caveat, the outcome of being infected by the parasite differs from one person to another. while some people become aspiring entrepreneurs, others become reckless.

This is why T. Gondii is also unfortunately associated with reckless driving and road accidents.