When we launched our phone card company back in the 1980s, we thought it was a brilliant opportunity. And it was – for at least a week. After all, 40 years ago, calling a foreign country cost around five guilders a minute. We knew that if our company bought a lot of minutes, we could get a big discount, which we could then sell with a lesser discount to our customers. But as soon as we launched the company, all the big phone companies cut their tariffs dramatically. Suddenly, the business model for our company just didn’t exist anymore. These days, you pay between €0.10 and €0.15 a minute – and that’s calling an expensive country. The timing was simply as wrong as it could have been. There was nothing we could do. So, we smiled, closed the company and went on to the next thing. At least we failed fast.

Failure isn’t something I tend to think about a lot, though it’s true that if you look at an organizational chart showing all the companies I have been involved in, you’ll also see big red marks representing organizations that are no longer there. But it’s interesting to think about the difference between failure and a mistake. You can learn from a mistake, but a failure often means the end of your enterprise. Anyone can make a mistake, it’s human. But it’s best not to fail. I embrace my mistakes, learn from them – and move on.

You need to know, however, when to accept failure as inevitable, and when to be stubborn. I once bought a company in Poland that owned some manufacturing technology we didn’t have in the Netherlands. It was a big investment for me, with all the money coming out of my own pocket. Soon after I took over, we discovered that the company’s technical staff had started their own factory. It was a struggle. I wrote off around 80 percent of my investment – but I continued. We got new staff and new machines, and now it’s the best-running facility that we have.

One lesson I’ve recently shared with the students I mentor at RSM is the importance of openness. One student had a technology startup that failed. The student could not have known beforehand that this would happen: they were not to be blamed at all. They had an idea; it did not work. But they felt as if they had somehow cheated people, which was not the case. I advised him: be open. Just explain to everyone what happened. And it was fine. Everyone involved accepted the failure and wished the student good luck next time.

I believe that saying no is the best defense against failure, but I also know that can be hard when you’re a young entrepreneur who’s eager to do everything. Sometimes saying no comes back to being open: if you think you can’t meet a deadline, for example, be honest and say so, and that will help to build your good name and reputation. Trust is one of the most important qualities in an entrepreneur: it’s opened many doors.

But I’ve also found that saying no is not always an entirely rational decision. Sometimes I haven’t been comfortable; I’ve just had a gut feeling that something is not right. On the other hand, when I do want to do something, I just go for it. Back in 2004, we had an idea: let’s start a factory in India and we’ll reduce our product’s shipping time by eight weeks. So we took our company to India, and it went very well.

I’ve never had a career plan. In fact, you could say that my biggest failure was dropping science at school, which meant I went to Erasmus University rather than TU Delft – I could have become an engineer!

But it turned out that industry is my passion. And if I’ve learned anything from my failures, it’s that you should always follow your passion and have fun. If some things don’t go right, you can carry on with the things that do. Above all: be modest. Observe, absorb and learn.

Alexander Hylkema (Economics, 1981; Business Administration, 1984) is President of the fintube manufacturer Airco-Fin Group and founder of several related companies. He is also President of consulting services firm Noratech, and a strategic consultant with aerospace company Boeing.