Mistakes are Lessons in Disguise
[by Ellen Boughn]
“If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying”-Wynton Marsalis
I had been in business nearly two years when I made a terrible mistake. I don’t remember the nature of the disaster but the lesson I learned remains some 30 some years later.
After a couple of days of hand ringing and self-recrimination, I figured that the mistake had cost around $5000. I asked myself if I should continue since I had just lost the amount of money that my parents had advanced to help me start a stock photo agency.
I was certain that if I had an MBA, I wouldn’t have made the error and I couldn’t afford to go back to school. But then I realized that surely a graduate degree in business would have cost much more than $5,000.
Thus I was actually money and knowledge ahead as I knew I would never make that particular mistake again.
Mistakes are lessons in disguise.
Ellen Boughn advises photographers on website and portfolio image selections and general business. She is the author of Microstock Money Shots and posts to her blog at www.ellenboughn.com/blog
