There is a Japanese philosophy called Nana Korobi Ya Oki – fall seven times, stand up eight.
Every time I hear that phrase, I think of the many business owners I have met. They don’t fall once. They fall when sales drop, when cash flow gets tight, when people they trusted walk away, or when a business built over years almost collapses.
One story made me understand how heavy the words “stand up again” really are. I saw it in the journey of Datuk Wira Ilaiaraja and Datin Wira Sumitra, building their life and their business long before the Nuetraa brand we know today was born.
They didn’t go through one or two small failures. They carried losses of millions of ringgit, after the capital and effort they poured in did not produce what they hoped for. For Ilaiaraja, the pressure once took him to a very dark place in his life. He was on the Penang Bridge, so broken by business failure that the thought of ending his life crossed his mind.
Imagine what a founder feels at that moment. The money raised is gone. The dream doesn’t turn out the way it was planned. Hope fades, and at some point the future feels like there is no way out.
But that day was not the end of his story. He chose to go home. He chose to live, and in the end, he chose to try again. Together with Sumitra, they rebuilt their life and their business bit by bit. From their experience in pharmacy, and on the advice and guidance I gave them, they built Nuetraa with a focus on gut and liver health products.
That journey doesn’t erase what happened. But what almost broke them became part of the people they needed to be to build something bigger.
That is why I believe resilience is not just about the ability to endure.
Many business owners I know got up not because they weren’t afraid or because they knew everything would be fine again. They got up because there was still family depending on them, a team that still believed, and a dream they weren’t ready to walk away from.
But resilience also doesn’t mean repeating the same mistakes with more enthusiasm. Every time we fall, we need to reflect. Every time we get up, we need to carry better knowledge, stronger discipline, more mature decisions and a more solid system.
This is where resilience meets Kaizen, continuous improvement. If yesterday you fell because of a wrong decision, don’t get up and make the same kind of decision. If you fell because of cash flow, get up with a better understanding of finance. If you fell because you relied too much on yourself, get up with the courage to build a team and systems.
A founder’s strength is not measured only by how many times he can stand. It is also measured by who he is each time he stands again. Ilaia and Sumitra’s story reminds me that we cannot judge a person’s whole journey by the darkest chapter of their life.
Sometimes when we are at the bottom, we think our story is over. When maybe Allah SWT is still giving us room to write a chapter we ourselves cannot yet imagine.
If your business is struggling today, don’t treat one failure as the final verdict on who you are or how far you can still go. Take time, reflect, and get help if you need it. Learn from what happened, and when you are ready, get up better than before.
Nana Korobi Ya Oki – Fall seven times. Stand up eight.
Datuk Wira
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