Mark

A: When I was in my 20s and floundering around, I became inspired by the life of Buckminster Fuller. For the few today who know anything at all about the man who was once on the cover of Time Magazine (1964), it is usually that he was the inventor of the geodesic dome. You see it still here and there - those triangular playground climbing structures, as tops of buildings, as homes, and as buildings themselves.

What most people don't know is that for the first 32 years of Bucky's life, he was a complete failure, flunking out of Harvard twice (the second time was my favorite - he spent his entire semester's tuition on a night out in New York with nine showgirls!), failing at several businesses, and so on.

He turned everything around once he realized that his mistakes were his greatest asset.

If he could learn from his mistakes, he theorized, and help as many people as possible in the process, he just might become a success. He decided to make his life an experiment, to see what one man could do to improve the world by learning from his mistakes. In the end he became a scientist, architect, mathematician, poet, author, inventor . . . in fact, he had the longest entry ever in the history of Who's Who.

Bucky used to say that he had made more mistakes than anyone he had ever met, that in fact, he was "the planet's most successful failure."

Bless your mistakes. Take a chance and nosedive. Yes, of course you will get a bloody nose on occasion, but is that not the essence of what it means to be a franchisee or other entrepreneur? A person willing to take a risk with money to make money.

I suggest that it is the risk that is the juice that revs your engine. When it pays off, it is the best, but even when it does not, there is great value. Thomas Edison once said, "Of the 200 light bulbs that didn't work, every failure told me something that I was able to incorporate into the next attempt."

Consider these "failures":

• Bill Gates: His first business, with buddy Paul Allen, was called Traf-O-Data. It analyzed traffic flow, and failed.
• Henry Ford: His Detroit Automobile Company went bankrupt, and the Henry Ford Company went out of business. He thereafter started Ford Motor Company at age 40.
• Abraham Lincoln: After losing his first bid for office - a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives - Lincoln opened a general store, but his partner soon misused business funds and the venture quickly failed.

The correlation to your willingness to take a risk and make a mistake is that, for the experience to be beneficial, you have to be willing to be wrong. There is little value in mistake-making if you don't soon realize what part you played in the venture.

When you admit you were wrong, you can make a course correction. When you admit you were wrong, you can learn something new. When you admit you were wrong, you can figure out how to do it right. But if you insist you were right, you may be doomed to repeat your mistake.

Making a mistake and the willingness to be wrong: Two of the best friends your franchise can have.

About Steve Strauss

Steven D. Strauss is one of the world's leading experts on entrepreneurship. A lawyer, author, and public speaker, his latest book is The Big Idea: How Business Innovators Get Great Ideas to Market. Steve's columns regularly appear on USA Today.com, Workz.com, Bizland.com, and Staples.com, among others. You can sign up today for his free newsletter, "Small Business Success Secrets!" at his business web site - www.MrAllBiz.com.