James Laughlin breaks down why businesses fail: 1 in 5 don't make it past year one, 38% are gone by year three, and half are done by year five. He argues you need to learn from failure without letting your business become one of the statistics.
1 in 5 (20%)
38%
50%
65%
Well, first things first, you got to learn to fail. Nobody succeeded without failing. Go back to when you walk, you know, go back to nine months old. There's no way you just popped up. In a way you went perfectly. You had a few stumbles and trips and falls. Took you weeks, maybe months to start to get a bit of confidence, years to get really confident to run without scraping and falling. So you've got to learn to embrace failure. However, when it comes to business, absolute failure means the end of the business. So we want to avoid that micro failure and failing fast is really important. I want to give you some stats. 1 in 5 US businesses fail in their first year. You look across many other western societies. That's no different. This is from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics by the way. By year three, 38% of businesses fail. By year five, 50% and 10 years in 65% of businesses fail.
