Here&#x27;s the thing about excuses.<p>Excuses can be identified as anything said that has no consequence. And to anyone focused on only the consequences, not a single one of those words matter. They could be true, they could be false, it doesn&#x27;t matter. Nobody cares, because nobody&#x27;s listening.<p>An excuse is the very act of disowning a consequence, and those who are responsible for consequences, can never disown them. Anyone who recognizes this never has an excuse. They just fix things, which often can be done silently. Entrepreneurs, like coaches, have no excuses.<p>Excuses arise from the need to dodge responsibility. But the catch is, if you&#x27;ve got responsibilities you can dodge with excuses, you never were truly responsible for them anyway. You never had full ownership. If you give your boss an excuse that they are okay with, it either means the work didn&#x27;t matter, or they had backup, aka, they expected you to fail. When a kid has a doctor&#x27;s note that excused them from a field trip, it&#x27;s okay, because the kid&#x27;s presence doesn&#x27;t matter that much. They just need a &quot;good excuse&quot;. It&#x27;s a true shame schools are so full of good excuses.<p>The true worthlessness of excuses can be demonstrated by the fact that anyone smart enough can come up with an infinite number of them. Allow lies, and you&#x27;ve got even more. If you ask nicely, in a bureaucracy, your boss may even come up with an excuse for you. Ya, &quot;he&#x27;s got your back.&quot; Except, that won&#x27;t change the fact that you&#x27;re all full of shit. And by shit I mean excuses.<p>But this has dire consequences beyond mere work. The same applies for excuses to be happy, and excuses to be sad, and for anything else. In other words, those who make a habit of making excuses can make an excuse for anything if they&#x27;re smart enough. They will claim them all as &quot;reasons&quot; but the truth is, they&#x27;re just doing whatever they want. A person that wants to be happy will have every excuse to, and vice versa. But excuses have no consequence. That person was already happy to begin with! (and vice versa). You see happy and depressed people with great excuses all the time. They&#x27;re just happy or depressed. And if you need an excuse to be kind, you&#x27;re an asshole already.<p>As a business owner, and as a parent, there will be no excuses. Instead, tell me how you could have not failed. Better yet, implement something that will prevent it from ever happening again. And that&#x27;s what everyone cares about.