FIVE Magazine YB - VOL2 | Page 12

M Fail Fast, Succeed Faster By Natalia Halec 12 yourBusiness Online | VOLUME 1 - ISSUE 2 any people are uncomfortable talking about business failure but Sunil Godse is not one of them. With over 18 years of experience as a business consultant, he’s heard enough stories about failure to fill a book and writing a book is exactly what he’s done. “The interesting thing I keep hearing a lot is that nobody really wants to talk about failure,” says Godse. “Even publishers say that it has to be a story about success. But it really is success because if you work on this system, you answer these questions, you will be successful. So don’t look at it the wrong way. Let’s take a look at these lessons learned from other people through a lens of failure.” Godse has succeeded in finding plenty of people eager to talk about their own business failures. He has interviewed over 200 people for his book, ranging from small and medium sized business owners to current and former executives of large companies like McDonald’s, Harry Rosen Inc., Bowers and Wilkins, 3M Canada and Aeroplan – all of whom recognize the importance of sharing their experiences. “All these huge names told me stories about challenges and failures they’ve had and they found incredibly valuable to talk about because they all say the success has come from their failures and the lessons learned,” he says. “Fail Fast, Succeed Faster” is a collection of stories about real business challenges and failures that sets a framework for addressing numerous crucial questions that every entrepreneur should answer from the start. The goal of the book is to stave off business failure and save money, time and other valuable resources by posing questions, sharing stories, and drawing lessons that can help both start-ups and existing businesses become better prepared to effectively overcome challenges. “There’s a lot of these things that entrepreneurs don’t think about and it gets them into trouble very, very quickly and so I end up asking a lot of very simple questions to poke holes in their idea,” says Godse. Many ideas may seem great but do not end up being viable because something’s been overlooked. Other ideas are plain dumb and it’s better to know that from the start, before the s F