When it comes to entrepreneurship in Brazil, there is still a dangerously romanticized illusion: that passion, courage, and persistence are enough to make a business thrive. In practice, however, the reality is harsher. According to Sebrae, 50% of companies close their doors in the first five years of activity. 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 that lacks formal education focused on business management, it is common for entrepreneurs to start their journeys with limited knowledge of 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 settles in as a final verdict.
But what if failure was not the end? What if it was actually 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, it is necessary to change the mindset. It is necessary to move from being a victim of circumstances to assuming the role of protagonist of one’s own growth.
Companies do not fail only due to lack of sales or capital. They collapse due to lack of clarity, direction, and structured leadership. Most fatal errors are linked to the absence of strategy: fragile positioning, misguided metrics, decisions made on the fly, and management focused solely on operations.
The Harvard Business Review classifies a company’s life cycle into five stages: existence, survival, success, bureaucratization, and maturity. Each phase demands different skills from the leader. Often, what brought the business to a certain point is exactly what hinders it from growing further. Courage turns into rigidity. Total involvement becomes dependency. Agility transforms into chaos.
In this context, failure can be the clearest sign that it’s time for a change. To stop trying to ‘do more’ and start ‘thinking better.’ To move out of autopilot and take on a more strategic stance.
But this cannot be done alone. The entrepreneur who believes they need to solve everything by themselves is doomed to repeat their mistakes with more sophistication. The turning point lies in seeking environments that challenge their way of thinking. Advisory boards, structured masterminds, specialized mentorship, and deep diagnostics help identify blind spots that are hindering growth.
Often, the problem is not in the team, market, or competition. It lies in the mental model still governing decisions. It’s common to find high-revenue business owners with low profitability. With a heavy workload, but no time to think. Proud of their brand, but fearful of the future. This reveals management operating on the edge, supported by personal effort, not structure.
Business maturity begins when the leader realizes it’s not about working harder but working smarter. When they allow themselves to move from urgency to strategy. When they stop searching for miraculous solutions and start building systems that sustain growth consistently.
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 for the business to function autonomously. And connection with other leaders who have already 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 with the ability to reflect, reposition, and build legacies, not just revenue.
Failure does not need to be feared. It needs to be understood. It shows where the limit of the current model is. It reveals that what brought you here will not take you further. Instead of being hidden, it should be used as fuel to redesign a new cycle.
Every company that is a reference today went through moments of instability. What sets them apart is that, at some point in the journey, their leaders decided to stop operating in improvisation and started to build consciously. They moved from being firefighters to becoming architects of growth.
Therefore, if you are going through a difficult period, what may be lacking is not effort. It might be direction. It might be the courage to think differently. Because companies that grow with structure do not depend on luck, but on method.
