
Peter Cline moved from military service to startups and failed multiple times before learning three critical lessons: get a fully committed co-founder, validate your target user before building, and document what didn't work so you improve next time.
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pushing forward, and that worked decently well when most of the things you're doing are like physical challenges. Um, but that's kind of a shift post-military that I've had to do a lot more reflection when things don't work out, especially, you know, starting business. I've tried to start so many businesses that didn't work, all kind of unrelated to the one I'm doing now, travel apps and things like that.
Yes.
Um, but each one failed and for good reason, but each time I learned something, you know, like, okay, this time I learned I probably shouldn't try and build a business where the co-founder is just like so, so not committed, it's incredible. And I shouldn't try and build a business where, you know, I can't really figure out who the target user is going to be, it just sounds like a really cool idea. Or like, you know, nobody signs up for a waitlist first, I just start building it immediately. Um, or like, you know, you learn how to use Google Ads or run a cold email campaign. It's like each one adds But it's important for you to say like, what didn't work and what did.
Wow.
And kind of use that and pull it all into the next one. Because if you are kind of naturally entrepreneurial and want to keep building things, it's important to do that. And so that's helped a lot. Those are, I think, the 3 things.
So no, that is very powerful. Like we say on the Leadership and Success podcast, we need to fail forward, right? Don't let failure go to waste. Right. And in my own experience, I've learned so much more when I failed than when I succeeded. I think it was JFK, right, who said that success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. But when you do fail, you are not a failure, but you need to learn from the experience so that you don't repeat the
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