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How influential entrepreneurs handled career mistakes

In the course of one’s life, one is bound to make mistakes, career mistakes it may seem hard to ever to recover again.

Career Mistakes

In the course of one’s life, one is bound to make mistakes, career mistakes it may seem hard to ever to recover again

Before one hacks it and join the envious club of filthy rich guys, it seems one must fail miserably before ascending to the top. Failure according to some experts is actually the ingredient of success and until one experiences failure one will always be afraid of taking risks and with that you can kiss prosperity and retiring at 40 years goodbye.

The corporate world is like a chess game, for one to really become the grand master, one has to think four steps ahead of the game, once an opportunity arises you grab it by two hands, run with it even if it means endangering your king and queen in order to bag the price.

Otherwise simply moving pawns around will leave your working until you are eighty and still barely scraping enough.

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You may be even be out of work now thanks to a major scene you pulled last year during the office end year party, or your company may have gone under or some other office misdemeanor, however in the words of the apartheid icon, Nelson Mandela, “It’s not important how many times you fall but how many times you rise up”.  So rise up, brush yourself, learn from your mistakes and head straight back into action.

The good thing, after all is that you are the first nor alone in this area. you don’t need to look far, some of the biggest, wealthiest and most influential entrepreneurs today from the late Steve jobs, Richard Branson to Bill gates, have all at one point in their career made huge career blunders critics were sure they will never recover from, but as history has shown they did not allow that failure to define them, they rose up, brush themselves and went ahead to conquer the world.

Here is how they did it.

Steve Jobs

When it comes to making epic career mistakes and bouncing back like hey! You got nothing on me, it has to be Steve jobs, Steve is the poster child of falling to rock bottom and bouncing back.

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Ever an inventor Jobs from an early age showed ken interest in electronics and gadgetry, he would however find success in his 20s when he befriended Steve Wozniak an engineer then at Hewlett-Packard to join him and together created the Apple I followed by Apple II, the first personal computer.

By 23 years old he was wildly successful, fabulously wealthy and a global celebrity, however when he hit 30 yrs, he got into a power struggle with Apple’s board of directors on the direction of the company and he was summarily dismissed from the company he had helped found.

After walloping in self-pity and middle life crisis even contemplating to run away from Silicon Valley and leave it behind, something dawn on him, he still loved what he did and so he decided to start over again.

Undaunted by the failure, he founded a new company, NeXT, which 10 years later was acquired by Apple and Steve jobs offered his old job again. Apple by then was registering losses and was on the verge of bankruptcy.  Once back at Apple, Jobs engineered a turn back to profitability and went ahead to create technological innovations like ITunes, IPod, and IPhones.

Bill Gates

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Before Bill Gates hit the jackpot with Microsoft, he founded a company called Traf-O-Data, which aimed to process and analyze the data from traffic tapes which was a huge disaster.

However never one to give up, he rose up from the early failure and went ahead exploring new opportunities, a few years later, he created his first Microsoft product, and forged a new path to success and the rest as they say is history.

Walt Disney

One of the most creative geniuses of the 20th century was once fired from a newspaper because he lacked ‘creativity’.

Trying to make ends meet, Disney formed his first animation company, called Laugh-O-Gram Films. However success was long coming and he was forced to close Laugh-O-Gram for lack of profitability.

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Desperate and out of money, Disney decided to try his hand in Hollywood where he faced even more criticism and failure until finally, he made it and his first few classic films skyrocket to popularity and landed him to stardom.

Richard Branson

Branson has tried his hand in so many unprofitable businesses that you would think by now he would have just given up all together.

The business mogul has since launched more than 400 companies under the Virgin brand, some successes other spectacular fails from Airlines, soft drinks, music records to underwear, now everywhere across the globe the Virgin brand is known.

His secret for success? According to Branson recognizing mistakes and recovering are essentials skills for an entrepreneur.

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“My mother drummed into me from an early age that I should not spend much time regretting the past, over the years, my team and I have not let mistakes, failures or mishaps get us down Instead, even when a venture has failed, we try to look for opportunities, to see whether we can capitalize on another gap in the market”  Branson once said.

Take away points

After committing a career mistake, always hope for the Best but Prepare for the Worst that way you will not be surprised.

Secondly be a problem solver and own up and take responsibility, only that way can you begin to learn and correct your mistakes,

Thirdly control the damage by cleaning up the mess, when you find yourself in a ditch you stop digging and start strategizing how to climb up, if you are out of job don’t make it worse by resorting to  heavy drinking like there is no tomorrow, you will only be making your situation worse.

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Fourthly try to turn your trouble into Triumph by taking time to retrospect where you went wrong so that you don’t repeat it again.

And lastly don’t dwell on the past, instead focus on the future.

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