Don't learn from other people's mistakes, instead just do you and make mistakes that you can learn from. Many a time you find that what drove the person to commit a mistake is not known to you and yet draws up a conclusion on the unknown.
Mistakes are a way of learning. We find solutions in retracing our steps on our process of readying ourselves for our retake. This is what happens with those whom we celebrate today. What they learn from the next is what they do better than them and what they can do to beat them at that. Taking the time waiting for others to make mistakes so you can take another time on the postmortem of those mistakes a waste of both your time and resources. Invest those precious resources wisely rather because the minute you figure out how they failed, they moved on to something else that will be followed up again by ones like you, so, focus on you and your cause because the pathfinders do same, thus they're called game changers and trendsetters.
I have a friend who once told me that I should lose sleep only over my success. Said that: 'success is ephemeral, hence failure a celebrity of note in many hearts' [1]. This was told to me during a failed attempt at a toast with him and my partner over the deal he just brokered with a landlord, now former landlord, on our behalf as he was not only a childhood friend but also my business consultant.
What he negotiated was a long-term lease agreement that was bearing two relief clauses, namely the step-up clause and the forbearance clause (known as longanimity also). Legal and corporate jargon only groove your ears when you're winning as they are for you not against,,,,,mhhh,,you know that.
A lot of startups can benefit immensely from the two, and this is how: with the step-up clause the landlord agrees to you the tenant paying your occupancy in gradual progression. Thus translating to you having a launch phase rental amount for say first four months, then hop on to the momentum phase for another four months, and lastly the sustenance phase for the year's remainder, which will mean you now are legible for full amount rental starting the next year. It goes like; the last highest rental amount paid is your benchmark, but it be cut in half and you pay it once as security and first month rental. It saw us succeed.
Then came the second round, the forbearance clause. That clause meant the landlord will not enforce and ejection order against us, literally saying he won't evict us should we encounter challenges in our operations that lead to us failing to pay rent. It didn't say though, not be paying nothing at all. What it stipulated was simply that after 24 months of undefaulted rental months could we be allowed a period of up to 12 months of not paying our rental (with trial balance proof as the sole condition thereto attached), but only arrears thereof. It was the best lease I've ever signed in my life.
However, hard times followed post the immunity period. We had to pay an exorbitant rental amount that forced us out of business temporarily and but again thanks to having a business consultant, renegotiated the terms that left us eight years in in a five-year contract (the only mistake I made was not asking about what will be the catch thereafter, of which turned to be a hefty 17.5% increase on our rental amount which we couldn't opt out of, but we were in business still at least). With that said, I still don't regret for I learnt a lot and grew from the experience, and mostly grateful for having not listened to naysayers about how expensive consultants are and will do no good for your business.
In conclusion: now, if you were standing by the corner waiting for my mistake, what would you have learned without full knowledge of the contents of our agreement? Let's learn what's right and learn to focus on our own affairs and, maybe we'll grow to be like the industry frontiers we aspire to be.
[1] by KgeleLeso
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