This is a problem in American Culture. Nobody wants to be wrong and admit to making mistakes and failing so they learn from it. Instead, it is "saving face" to say I pivoted instead of I failed.

I ran two startups one in the mid-1990s and one in 1999-2001, I gained experience as a President and later Vice-President to let my business partner get more experience as a President. I have degrees in computer and business areas as well and combine the two.

Thing is I failed because the first business did not have a credit card system and we took checks that later bounced. (You'll find people who do this on purpose to get free stuff from a small business because we can't afford lawyers to collect on them.) and also we sold computers and computer services trying to do databases and make software. Big Box stores ate our lunch with $300 PCs via Internet Rebates and ours was $700 but with better quality parts so the PC lasts longer. We tried the same thing with the second company and my business partner got sick with a heart attack (he survived) but the business suffered as a result and closed.

Yeah I failed twice, but I keep on trying to do better and I'm in the St. Louis MO area and cannot relocate, and of course not on the west coast where all of the action is apparently.

I got a friend who tried to offer computer services in the Branson MO area, most of them don't even use a computer out there, and entertainers go without work when out of season and apply for unemployment, etc. You have to time the seasons of Branson when the shows are popular and then save expenses when they are out of season. Plus most people there just buy from Wal-Mart for the computer needs.

Yeah, location really matters. He had to join his wife's Antique FLea Market store and close down his computer store and get into the Flipping business of driving to garage sales to buy stuff cheap for the flea market, etc.

In my area after the Ferguson riots (just a few miles from my house) the economy is still trying to recover.

I try not to get into politics, treat everyone as an individual and hope for the best. I've worked for FORTUNE 500 companies and mid-size to small companies as well.

Look at Steve Jobs' career. He failed many times. Apple ///, Apple Lisa, even the first Macintosh was a flop and he left Apple in 1985 to found Next. He would brag that he just asked people and they gave him what he asked, but trying to get Computer Stores to sell the Apple 1 computer made him get rejected a lot. It was only when some VC saw potential in the Apple 1 that he got money to make it go live and sell via mail order. Also Apple kept bleeding money until it bought Next and got Steve Jobs back, and while Next was a failure and mistake, merging it with Mac OS to make Mac OSX and later going from PowerPC to Intel chips worked. Without Steve Jobs failures, there would be no iPod or iTunes, and no iPhone and iPad. Sure Apple wasn't the first to invent the smart phone etc, but they made them easier to use and better than the competition like Blackberry and Windows CE phones.

Instead, culture does not forget or forgive, this is against compassion and empathy, and in a way hate based.

As a baby, we did not walk we crawled first, and in learning how to walk we kept falling down until we could control balance and put one foot in front of another. We forget stuff like that, and social anxiety is put on people who fail and make mistakes, and then nobody learns anything and people keep making the same mistakes and failure and try to hide them.

Does that make sense to anyone? In Steve Jobs failures, he found a way to make a success out of them. He only did so after he went back to school for a business degree after leaving Apple.