When it comes to entrepreneurship in Brazil, a dangerously romanticized illusion still persists: that passion, courage, and persistence are enough to make a business thrive. In practice, however, the reality is harsher. According to Sebrae, 50% of businesses close their doors within the first five years of operation. This means that, for many, failure is not a remote possibility, but a common outcome. The problem is that most entrepreneurs are not prepared to deal with it productively.
In a country lacking formal education focused on business management, it is common for entrepreneurs to start their journeys with limited knowledge about strategic planning, leadership, or business modeling. Many still confuse a good idea with a viable plan. And when execution does not yield the expected results, the feeling of failure sets in as a definitive sentence.
But what if failure wasn’t the end? What if it were, in fact, the first stage of business maturity? Making mistakes is inevitable. Persisting in error is optional. Failure, when well understood, becomes a powerful tool for learning and repositioning. However, for this to happen, a mental shift is needed. It’s necessary to move from being a victim of circumstances to taking on the role of the protagonist of one’s own growth.
Businesses don’t fail just due to lack of sales or capital. They collapse due to lack of clarity, direction, and structured leadership. Most fatal mistakes are linked to the absence of strategy: weak positioning, misguided metrics, decisions made on the fly, and management focused only on operations.
Harvard Business Review classifies a company’s life cycle into five stages: existence, survival, success, bureaucratization, and maturity. Each phase requires different skills from the leader. And often, what got the business to a certain point is precisely what prevents it from growing beyond that. What was courage becomes rigidity. What was total involvement becomes dependence. What was agility turns into chaos.
In this context, failure can be the clearest sign that it’s time to change. To stop trying to ‘do more’ and start ‘thinking better.’ To get off autopilot and adopt a more strategic stance.
But this cannot be done alone. The entrepreneur who believes they need to solve everything on their own is doomed to repeat their mistakes with greater sophistication. The key to turning things around lies in seeking environments that challenge their way of thinking. Advisory boards, structured masterminds, specialized mentorships, and deep diagnostics help identify blind spots that are hindering growth.
Often, the problem is not the team, the market, or the competition. It’s the mental model that still governs decisions. It’s common to find entrepreneurs with high revenue but low profitability. With a large workload but no time to think. Proud of their brand but fearful of the future. This reveals management operating at its limits, sustained by personal effort rather than structure.
Business maturity begins when the leader understands that it’s not about working harder, but about working smarter. When they allow themselves to move away from urgency and focus on strategy. When they stop seeking miracle solutions and start building systems that sustain consistent growth.
For this, it is essential to develop three pillars: clarity, structure, and connection. Clarity about where you are and where you want to go. Structure so the business can operate autonomously. And connection with other leaders who have overcome similar challenges and can accelerate your learning curve.
There is no mature company with an immature leader. And immaturity, in this case, has no relation to age or time in the market, but to the ability to reflect, reposition oneself, and build legacies—not just revenue.
Failure does not need to be feared. It needs to be understood. It shows the limits of the current model. It reveals that what got you here won’t take you further. And instead of being hidden, it should be used as fuel to redesign a new cycle.
Every company that is now a reference has gone through moments of instability. What sets them apart is that, at some point in their journey, their leaders decided to stop operating on the fly and started building with awareness. They moved away from being firefighters and took on the role of architects of growth.
So, if you’re going through a tough time, perhaps what’s missing isn’t effort. But direction. Or the courage to think differently. Because businesses that grow with structure don’t depend on luck, but on method.
