As an entrepreneur, you had better learn to make lemonade. My own triumphs and setbacks demonstrate why that is more than a cliché.

Success is the magic elixir all entrepreneurs crave. It tastes sweet and makes the whole journey worthwhile. Failure is what entrepreneurs fear and go to extremes to avoid. And when failure does finally catch up, many take the easy route of burying their heads in the sand. Others embrace the experience and learn all they can.

I've had my share of both success and failure. I have no doubt that the most important lessons life has taught me stem from failure. And interestingly, the bigger the failure I've suffered, the bigger the success that has always followed.

YOUNG AND GREEN. As an entrepreneur who has co-founded two tech companies, helped produce a Hollywood film, and achieved many other milestones, I am considered successful by many people. Yet, if I were to list my failures, I could write volumes. I wouldn't know where to start -- or where to end.

My first experience with failure on a grand scale came when I was a young computer programmer in Canberra, Australia. Like a typical techie, I just knew I was the best software developer on the planet and could do no wrong. That was until some last-minute enhancements I made to our computer systems disrupted corporate operations for an entire day.

Fortunately, I had a forgiving boss who saw this as a great lesson for me. And he was right -- my techie ego and arrogance disappeared rapidly, and I developed a new focus on learning from those with more experience.

SAYING NO. And then came my software startup years. At a CS First Boston/IBM (IBM) spin-off, my job as chief technology officer was to deliver quality products and help make the company grow. In the software world, customers always desire new features, and salespeople always want you to promise the world so they can close deals. It didn't take long before the promises caught up with my team's ability to deliver.

For more than a year, we suffered one customer setback after another, loss of critical business, and declining company morale. And I had to take sharp criticism from the sales staff I was trying so hard to help. The lesson I gradually learned was the importance of saying no -- forcing the company to walk away from business at times -- and staying focused on commitments I had already made.

For a