The Past is Paralyzing-Financial Times Article

Regret can be a terrible addiction. Those who suffer from it so often become bitter and full of self-pity. It is an emotion that serious entrepreneurs cannot afford: they must keep pressing onwards and should not look back with remorse, dwelling on errors of long ago.

As Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, said: “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” Entrepreneurs must learn to manage the conflict between constant experimentation – which means lots of painful mistakes – and a fear of failure, which can lead to paralysis.

Likewise, past glory can be a killer. For example, Greg Dyke, who is a clever fellow, still harks back too much to his resignation as director-general of the BBC. He should move on and stop moaning about the injustice of it all.And Tim Waterstone should give up trying to buy back his bookshop chain, which he finally left more than 10 years ago (after selling it once and then getting involved again). He has tried to repurchase it at least five times, if rumour is to be believed. Possibly the root of the problem is that he exaggerates the chain’s importance, once saying: “Waterstone’s does more for the day-to-day cultural life of the nation than perhaps anything or anyone else.”

No doubt I suffered from a similar delusion in taking over Borders bookshops. But such thoughts were never true, and are even less so now, in the age of e-books and Amazon. Admittedly, I did try to buy back PizzaExpress once, but that was different – it would have been a sound financial deal ...

And who doesn’t have a tale of the one that got away? I remember David Dein, my predecessor as chairman of the charity Stage One, telling a wonderfully self-deprecating anecdote of his initial activities as a theatrical angel. Mr Dein, who has made a fortune investing in Arsenal football club, backed some early shows from a promising young producer called Cameron Mackintosh, and they unfortunately lost money. Finally, the apprentice impresario approached him about supporting an idea to put some of T.S. Eliot’s poems to music, on stage. Not unreasonably, Mr Dein turned it down. It became, of course, Cats, one of the most successful productions of all time, and helped make Mr Mackintosh a very rich man indeed.

One of my experiences in that vein was Transform, a leading cosmetic surgery company. It was a highly profitable undertaking, serving a booming market, and I believed the acquisition would be a real winner. I spent many weeks negotiating a deal, but then got slightly cold feet at the last minute, and fell out with the vendor over a relatively trivial sum. He immediately turned round and sold it to those astute fellows at Phoenix private equity. Inevitably, they proceeded to make a rapid fortune.

At least my mistake wasn’t as expensive as George Bell’s. He was the former documentary film-maker hired in 1996 to run Excite, the dotcom darling, which achieved a market capitalisation of $35bn at its peak. Three years later, the founders of Google decided that their search business was interfering with their studies and tried to sell it to a number of buyers, including Mr Bell, for just $750,000. He turned it down flat. Excite subsequently went bankrupt, while Google is now worth $170bn.

And it would be hard not to feel some sympathy for James Monaghan. In 1960, he teamed up with his brother Tom in the purchase of a single pizza restaurant in Michigan for $500. But later that year, he decided to go travelling, and so sold his 50 per cent share in the business to his brother in exchange for a used Volkswagen Beetle. A few years later, the company changed its name to Domino’s Pizza, and in 1998 was sold for about $1bn.
By all means treasure experience, and learn from your blunders. But don’t wallow in nostalgia, pining for what might have been. Rather, go ahead and seize the day no matter what. I have little time for those who say: I wish I had started my own business. My only response is: so do it now.

DISCLAIMER: This article was taken from The Financial Times, written by Luke Johnson, published April 19th, 2011