One of the most important truisms of entrepreneurship is not over planning. This is contrary to what most “gurus” and MBA programs will tell you. However, in the real entrepreneurial trenches, you don’t want to miss the opportunity to “fail fast.” The lessons learned from a single entrepreneurial mistake will be tremendously more useful than months of research and over-planning. In most cases, you’re not even aware of the specific risk or landmine that you will need to avoid.

President Theodore Roosevelt said it best during his “Man in the Arena” speech. In case you’ve never heard it, here is the critical part. “Get your butt in the arena and keep getting up when you’re knocked down!” That quote may be slightly paraphrased a bit. The man didn’t mince words. However, he realized that mistakes are part of the process of success.

Inertia is not your friend when you’re first starting your company. You are presently in the “bodies at
rest, tend to stay at rest” phase of your company’s life. Overcoming this inertia will be the hardest thing that you do. It’s not a cliché that your first dollar is your hardest to make. This begs the following question. “What is the easiest path to my company’s first dollar?” Here’s my expert advice. Throw everything against the wall and see what sticks. It’s simple, but the worse case scenario is that you get knocked down. So, get up. And when you get up, you will have so much more knowledge regarding how to be successful than you had before you got knocked down.

In 2010, GCA Founder, Randy Wimmer, launched a Federal Government contracting company. He
achieved immediate and sustained growth and sold that company in 2016 for 8-figures. That’s what
people saw…rapid, near-vertical growth. What people didn’t see is that Randy launched that same
company in 2003 and failed miserably. They also didn’t see that he relaunched in 2006 and went out of business a short time later. The most important variable in Randy’s success in 2010 was his failures in 2003 and 2006. He “failed fast” to succeed sooner.