“Stay focused and keep shipping” was Mark Zuckerberg’s message as Facebook approached its 2012 IPO. By April 2015, after a bumpy first year as a public company, Facebook’s market value had risen above $230 billion.

How does success happen? Easy. You have to embrace failure first.

Failure is an inevitable way station on the journey to success.

The sooner you fail and quickly learn from the mistakes you’ve made the sooner you will become a winner.

You can’t afford to be afraid of failure. It’s a natural part of an entrepreneur’s existence. When you experiment, when you try something new, there’s an obvious increased risk of making mistakes and getting things wrong. But that’s what innovation is all about. That’s what drives entrepreneurs to succeed and separates the winners from the losers.

People who never fail are people who never do anything. Look at it this way: Every time you fail you are simply planting seeds for your next success.

For instance, have you ever heard of Traf-O-Data? Years before the launch of Microsoft it was Bill Gates’ and Paul Allen’s first business venture together. They developed a company that used a computerized microprocessor to analyze traffic patterns—counting the number of times car wheels crossed pressure-sensitive rubber tubes. Their first demo for officials in Washington state failed. But their experiences ultimately led to the founding of Microsoft.

Howard Schultz also made mistakes before finding the formula that helped Starbucks grow. His earlier coffeehouse concept followed Italian cafes closely: menus mostly in Italian, opera music, no chairs, no nonfat milk, and bowtie-wearing baristas. He changed the model, acquired Starbucks, and kept learning from what did not work.

Talk to famous authors. Many of them write numerous books before finding success and recognition. They will also tell you that there’s no such thing as writing a book—you rewrite a book because you make so many changes fine-tuning paragraphs that originally didn’t work.

For many internet startups in 2015, it was easier and cheaper to test an idea and make changes because some of the hard financial costs of experimentation were lower. You could regard that cost as part of research and development.

Failure can become a learning experience. I’m not advocating that you actively seek it. There is nothing wrong with a string of successes. I am saying that when failure arrives, use it. Do not fear it or let it leave you disheartened. Learning quickly is more important than failing fast.

Look at your own life. If you’re anything like most people (me included!) you’ll probably discover that your biggest learning experiences came out of errors and failures or times when you had to surmount huge obstacles.

So, you create. You experiment. You test what people like and what they dislike. You make mistakes. You correct them. You learn from them. You bounce back. Ultimately, in the long-term, failure is not an option, for sure. But short-term it’s an almost unavoidable, if not essential, part of the journey.

The point is simple. Success is not final, and failure does not have to be fatal. What matters is whether you have the courage to continue.