You’ve probably had a boss or client<\/strong> (the kind who talks in buzzwords and is very pleased with themselves) say something like that to you. We live in a wonderful world with the bad habit of judging people far too lightly<\/strong>, and that leads to mistakes that can change the course of a business. Of course, that also applies to the business world and the decisions made in it.<\/p>\n If you find it hard to believe that Americans elected Trump as president, you’ll be surprised to learn that a certain Walt Disney<\/strong> was fired from a production company for supposedly not being creative. Something similar happened to Harry Potter’s mother, J.K. Rowling<\/strong>, who was rejected by more than thirty publishers. So, point one: don’t trust people \u2013 most of the time they have no idea how good you can be.<\/p>\n It goes so far that even Michael Jordan<\/strong>, the best basketball player of all time, was told to go and sell hot dogs because he wasn’t tall enough to score baskets. And that came from professional coaches, scouts and managers, not from his brother-in-law.<\/p>\n But if individual cases have been striking, the huge mistakes<\/strong> made by companies<\/strong> that once ruled Take a classic: Kodak<\/strong>. For decades they were the masters of photography; their logo appeared at every sporting event, concert and big billboard, but technology wiped them off the map. Why? They refused to adapt<\/strong> to the digital world, believing it wasn’t the right time. We all know how that ended.<\/p>\n Another great empire that faded away was Nokia<\/strong>. Who didn’t spend hours playing the fabulous snake game in the early 2000s? However, they took the wrong path<\/strong>: while some people with a bitten apple were starting to take over the smartphone market, the Finns followed in BlackBerry’s footsteps\u2026 and both were forgotten together.<\/p>\n This iconic line from The Two Towers also applies to entrepreneurship. Despite these examples, the good news is that there’s always light at the end of the road.<\/strong> Very often, mistakes help us learn, as Edison said, the ways not to do things.<\/p>\n One example is Starbucks<\/strong>, which at one point made the mistake of feeling invincible and expanding into areas it didn’t master<\/strong> (film production, music, etc.). The parent company’s resources dwindled to the point where it neglected the quality of service that had made it successful, and even had to close almost a thousand stores. But it stepped back, reflected and focused on what it did best<\/strong>: food and drink.<\/p>\n And finally, one that will surely surprise you. Did you know that Netflix<\/strong> started out renting DVDs through its website? While giants like Blockbuster sank when the digital world arrived, Netflix changed its business model<\/strong> \u2013 and today we all know where it is.<\/p>\n So there you have it: believe in yourself, own your mistakes and be ready to correct them<\/strong> a thousand times over. Winning this long-distance race is up to you. Oh, and if you need a place to get started, you know where we are: we’ll be delighted to welcome you at Llum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s Llum Coworking blog post is for you, entrepreneur. Because you deserve it, and because we’re fed up with those bank adverts that give freelancers superpowers, and with comments like “you’re so lucky”, “what a life, working from the beach” or “if only I could\u2026”. If you also think those people should go and pick oranges for a while and stop talking, that they don’t know the meaning of the word “work” and that their adverts are awful, keep reading.<\/p>\n Today I’m writing just for you, sitting in front of your phone wondering how much longer you’ll have to pay your self-employed contributions, and glancing longingly at products that aren’t supermarket own-brand. Don’t worry: you’re not the first great business person to fail before ending up writing blog posts from a hammock in Bali, like me.<\/p>\n Let’s look back at some of the biggest flops in the world of entrepreneurship and how (some of them) managed to rise from the ashes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entrepreneurship"],"yoast_head":"\nCompanies that crashed because they couldn’t evolve<\/h2>\n
Middle-earth<\/del> the world because they didn’t know how to pivot are not far behind.<\/p>\n“Haleth, son of H\u00e1ma, there is always hope”<\/h2>\n