Most people are always looking for the “success formula”. They enjoy being inspired by huge success stories, and then try to emulate them. However, in general these success stories are often non-reproducible. They are the result of a combination of very unique factors.

It makes much more sense to learn from the mistakes of others. It is easier to observe their failures and then try to avoid the most frequent errors of people who have failed. By doing that we will directly increase our chances of success.

As a metaphor: are you able to cook? In general the first step to becoming a good cooker is to learn to avoid the simple mistakes that spoil your food…

But it is not so easy to learn from the mistakes of others. We always think: of course I would never make such obvious mistakes!

Taking Risks

Most actions have a chance to succeed and have a chance to fail, so it is OK to take risks. But there are obviously some things that have no chance to be successful.

I believe that many entrepreneurs have what they think is a clear “growth strategy” but they don’t have any “survival strategy”, so if they don’t succeed at first they simply can’t recover later.

In my opinion, the main reason that people try to do things that have no chance to succeed is because they do not understand the prerequisites. So, for example, they may say: “I can run a Marathon”. But they may fail to understand that several months of preparation are required before you try to run a Marathon.

In the same way an entrepreneur can always try to raise funds for a startup. But most startups need lots of work before they really become “fundable”.

So perhaps what we need to learn from the mistakes of others is exactly that: what are the prerequisites to be successful? Or at least: what are the prerequisites to have a chance to be successful?