When you run a small business (perhaps as small as just you), does failure ever really occur? I hear often in the media about this or that business being “too big to fail,” but in reality isn't it more like “too small to fail?”

I ask myself this question, more rhetorically than anything. I’ve been running a small business in one form or another for almost 30 years now. Yes, I’ve stopped offering some services and stopped making some products, and at one point in time, I did take a job with a paycheck—but even then I still had a small business going on the side. I realized after almost a decade of being in business that failure was just a perspective, especially in a world where everything changes.

Most ideas go through thousands if not millions of iterations. If we are to view each tweak to a new product or service idea as a “failure,” then everyone who has ever created anything new is far more of a failure than a success. The whole idea of failure is not relevant to the seasoned small-business owner and entrepreneur. The question then becomes not, “How will I succeed?” but, “How efficient can I become in creating something someone else wants to purchase?”

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