If you’re considering the thought of putting your military leadership and experience to use in the civilian world by starting your own business, I applaud you. Veterans are ideal candidates to become outstanding entrepreneurs, and nothing gives me a better sense of satisfaction than to watch one of my brothers and sisters in uniform accomplish this mission.

I wish you all the success in the world, and I’ll use this opportunity to impart a kernel of wisdom that I learned many years ago the hard way. Start your successful entrepreneurial journey by dropping the words “fault” and “blame” from your vocabulary FOREVER.

Once you have developed the mindset to establish control over your life and pursue an entrepreneurial lifestyle, you’ll soon realize that with that new empowerment comes an expectation of responsibility. This is not the same as the accountability that may be associated with a particular task, but the demonstrated “ownership” of the control you have established over the consequences of your business decisions.

The actions of fault and blame serve no other purpose than to transfer rightful ownership of control from one person to another. By necessary default and consequence, those who transfer control to another person end up losing it themselves instantly. This may appear to have a superficial benefit in the form of deflecting perceived judgment and consequence, but that proves to be nothing more than a secondary gain.

The price you actually paid for that maneuver was a regression back to a powerless position.

One of the lessons I learned when I launched my first restaurant was that when things don’t go according to plan, there’s no one to hide behind and no one to blame. Even if I could have found an external source to attribute the blame – many new start-up business owners and entrepreneurs do just that – it would not have changed the reality of the event or its outcome.

You’ve probably heard that 75% of all new businesses fail within their first five years; it’s a rather common statistic. Do you believe this rate is so high because the product is horrible or the business owners are completely inept?

In a very small percentage this may be true, but in the majority of cases the business owner made bad decisions – resulting from a habit of assigning blame and fault erroneously – that caused the real threat to the business to go unanswered.

Conversely, the same thing happens when those with a victim or martyr mindset assume blame erroneously: “it’s all my fault.” There are times when you can make all the right decisions and do all the right things, yet still lose to some degree. That falls into the category of “things happen,” and assuming blame for events completely outside of your control is equally destructive.

Admittedly, that happens to be my default position and it took me quite a while to work through that on my way to success. I honestly affirm that if I can do it, any veteran reading this post can do it as well.

I will also state unequivocally that assigning blame and fault is pointless even when it is justified.

If you’re not correcting a problem quickly as a result of being preoccupied with blame and fault, the problem still exists and poses a challenge that needs to be resolved. Identify the problem, correct it, learn from it and move on. If you don’t, your business venture remains at risk and the opportunity to fail becomes increasing real with each passing moment.

Benefit from the experience and leave the “blame game” to career politicians. As a veteran entrepreneur, you’re better than that.