What was your greatest failure, and did you learn from it?

I had a huge failure when I started my first business. I had a lot of fancy ideas and did everything wrong. I was so much influenced by other people’s successes that I tried to be someone I wasn’t. Basically, I was trying to mimic other successful entrepreneurs; probably because they seemed so cool and confident. I was actually trying to model my life in a way that seemed to be successful. I didn’t think about why these people were successful.

My greatest failure was my first business. It was an ecommerce business I started in high school, and my focus was to get my feet wet in business and learn from it, so I didn't have high expectations. Essentially, I was spreading myself too thin on tasks that were just simply non-essential. I should have focused more on marketing, since what I was doing (dropshipping) did not lend itself well to product differentiation. Furthermore, even in marketing, I should have focused more on a specific channel rather than being so spread out. I had instagram ads, facebook ads, google ads, and instagram influencer posts up, but I wasn't investing deeply into each one. Overall, it ended when I ran out of money. Since I didn't have high expectations, I was quite satisfied in terms of getting a good learning experience from my first dabble in business. Having learned from that, I am now focusing more on organic sources of traffic and providing value to others for my third startup (I did have a web design stint right after my ecommerce one), which is a rest API for developers that allows them to connect AI to their apps or projects. If you're curious, you can see my process and building in public on twitter @TheRealEtch What was your biggest failure?