Young Entrepreneur: Making A Mistake Once Is Called Learning. Making It Twice Means You’re Not Learning - William Brett Wilson

By Adam Toren

Wilson has had his share of mistakes on his way to becoming a successful investment banker for the energy industry. But he never repeated the same one twice. Probably one of his biggest mistakes was betting on a senior management position as an engineer for Alberta Oil.

“I ended up working for a big oil company, and my dream was to be in upper management in this big oil company. That dream got shattered one day when I took their management aptitude test. They came back and said, ‘You will be a good technical specialist, you will not be a good manager.’ And maybe they were right. But what took me a few years to learn, was that I would not be a good manager in a large, bureaucratic organization, whereas in a small, nimble, fleet-of-foot, relatively entrepreneurial organization, I just might flourish. My short attention span, and a willingness to work on 20 things at once, probably is a big part of the success of my various entrepreneurial adventures.” (more)