“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.