When our team got together last year to come up with our editorial calendar, we thought a nice theme for this month would be “Scary good business.” Of course, the month of October always invokes images of Halloween and being scared, thus the seasonal subject. But as I contemplated this more thoughtfully, it made me wonder, what really is scary good business? 

First of all, if you have ever owned a business that you started and/or bought with your own money, you know that it is a bit scary. Not like Jason or Michael Myers scary, but something much more terrifying than that because it is real. That kind of scary is called failure. 

In fact, according to Investopedia and Lending Tree, the failure rate for new businesses is high: 

• FIRST YEAR: 23.2% of new businesses fail
• FIVE YEARS: 48% of businesses fail
• 10 YEARS: 65.3% of businesses fail
• 15 YEARS: Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more

Now, if you have invested all of your life savings into a business, those statistics are scary. 

But here comes the good news part of the scary good business: Owning your own business is fun! Getting a business to the point where it makes you and others money is obviously important, but working hard to create something that helps bring value to others is extremely rewarding. 

Of course there’s failure, lurking in the shadows, and it is scary. However, I think of a famous quote from Winston Churchill (I love me some Winston Churchill!), he had an exceptional use of the English language and one of my favorite quotes from him is, “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”

In business, you will have victories and defeats. You will have successes and you will have failures. The real question is: can you maintain your enthusiasm between these two inevitables? 

The first part of Churchill’s quote is often left off. It says, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal.” I don’t know about you, but when I read those words, I am encouraged and challenged; not resting on any past successes but reaching, learning, helping and being humble in the process. 

Now that’s scary good business! We hope you enjoy this issue featuring stories from RAYWEST DESIGNBUILD, RTS Trade Tech Academy and one of the Journal’s scary-good successes, our upcoming Health Care Heroes event. 

God bless you and yours!