I have a friend who is basically a genius and a very successful man, in my books. However, he is too hard on himself. This gentleman does not give himself enough credit for what he has done well. He has been an entrepreneur now for most of his adult life, but he claims that for the first nine years he was an entrepreneur, he was a failure, because he tried many things and didn’t make any money. It was one failed attempt after another.
Let’s be real here. That is not a failure. All you have to do is implement a small change in mindset to realize that your “failures” were stepping stones on the road to success. As long as you learn something, no failure is a true failure. You only fail when you decide to give up.
To be truly successful, we have to be kind to ourselves. In fact, we have to be proud of ourselves, and that includes all the times things don’t work out. You have to keep alive that little spark inside of you. Be willing to do whatever it takes to be successful, even when others make fun of you for being obsessed or think you’re crazy for thinking someone like you can become a millionaire. They’ll be the first to tell you that you’re “just lucky” when you crack the millionaire code, or to come to you with outstretched hands.
You see, it all starts with a dream. Those of us who have already done it have tried and failed at many things, because that’s how it works. We’ve learned, for example, that most network marketing programs are scams, but we’ve also learned which ones aren’t and how to tell the difference. Tea people involved with MLM are great. They are earnest and optimistic kindred spirits in the battle for self-determination. Some of them are successful in MLM, but the vast majority are not. Still, most of the entrepreneurs I know started out in MLM. It was a boost for them, as it was for me.
Most MLM’s don’t work because most of the participants can’t and don’t want to sell. They hate selling. But if you are going to be successful in MLM, or in any business, you must start with a sincere and unwavering desire to sell. It’s about selling; never let anyone tell you otherwise.
Remember: the only true failure occurs when you simply give up. and i find myself those people all the time. They tell me, “Oh, I once had a business. But I had to close it down.” I’ve talked to hundreds of people over the years who have said that. They look up to those of us who have been self-employed for years, and they tried it, but it didn’t work for them right away, so they gave up. They went back to work for other people. Those people may they say they are failures, because they gave up.
Maybe it just wasn’t for them. They may not be failures in all aspects of their lives; in fact, they can be very successful in another way. But they are not business people. That’s not meant to be a judgment or an insult, just an observation. Some people are born employed, and there’s nothing wrong with that. How could we build our businesses without them?
Ben Franklin once remarked, “Those things that hurt instruct.” We tend to learn our lessons the hard way. But it’s still not a failure until you quit for good. Just understand that, and if you haven’t quit, feel good about yourself. You have to. This idea that you’ll perform at a higher level if you punish yourself is ridiculous; not a good long-term strategy. The right way to excel is to stay focused on your goals, be very excited about what you are trying to do, and be determined to achieve it, to find a way, no matter what. Try lots of different ideas. Control your pace, but push yourself. Do not burn yourself. As the Journey song says, be good to yourself. In the end, you are all you have. Even when you’re surrounded by all kinds of good people, in the end it’s your relationship with yourself that matters.
Marketing guru Dan Kennedy once had a client in Phoenix, Arizona. The first time he entered this client’s office, he saw a bulletin board covered with business cards. Dan said, “Oh, I see you collect business cards, too,” and the guy replied, “No, those are all my own business cards that I’ve had in the past.” This guy had been involved in a lot from different businesses. Some made a little money; some did not. But he never quit, even when a business didn’t work out. He found something else to be excited about and eventually made millions, and then he retired.
Here’s the thing: The average entrepreneur will try at least four or five different things before he succeeds, unless he gives up. Unfortunately, he will never hear that statistic from the government. They only tell you part of the story and they tell you that 95% of new businesses fail within five years. Hearing that, why would anyone go into business for themselves? That statistic scares people to death so they give up before they start. Why try if you are facing such miserable odds? They’d rather stick with the soul-killing little jobs they hate so much, where they feel like they’re in prison every day, just marking time until they’re finally released.
But that 95% failure rate can also be a lie, because it hides the fact that most entrepreneurs have to try a lot of different things before finally finding their one success story. And many of those businesses that no longer exist after five years? It’s because they were profitably sold to someone else, incorporated into a larger company, or deliberately closed so the owner could partake in a different opportunity. Statistics take none of that into account.
Ordinary people get richer every day. A great book came out in the 1990s called The millionaire next door. Two college professors wanted to do a study of people who had a net worth of more than $1 million; they were going to find these people, interview them, get some of their best tips, tricks, and strategies, and reveal them. And frankly, it’s easy to find people who have a net worth of over a million; It is information in the public domain. So they went to a city, settled in a nice hotel suite with caviar and champagne, and invited the local millionaires to visit.
It turned out that the people who showed up were not caviar and champagne people. They were the kind of people who drink beer and pretzels, mostly average small business owners. And I’m not talking about high-tech companies, but the mom-and-pop type (the Internet was just taking off at the time). For the most part, they didn’t live in fancy neighborhoods or drive new cars. Read The millionaire next door. It is instructive and fun. It turns out that most millionaires live in old neighborhoods, in houses that they have paid for. They are not flashy people. In fact, the professors found that people living in flashy neighborhoods were mostly about six months away from homelessness. They were living beyond their means, so if they lost their jobs or something happened to them, they were in trouble.
Failure is not failure until you give up. My friend who said that he had failed for nine years… no, he did not fail. He tried many things during those nine years. He learned all the things not job, and I was also learning other things as I went along. Thomas Edison and his team reportedly performed more than 1,000 different experiments before perfecting the light bulb. When asked, he said he didn’t miss; he just found 1,000 ways that didn’t work.
In his most famous speech, Winston Churchill stood in front of these kids in a college graduating class and basically said, “Never, never, never, never give up.” And then he sat back down. No one expected that, but it was absolutely brilliant.
I subscribe to Forbes Magazine, and they have great articles on people who are making money. I once read about a businessman who was 52 years old when he started making billions about ten years earlier. There was a sentence in that article that jumped out and hit me like a sledgehammer: “Push it until it breaks, fix it, then push it until it breaks again.” That’s a great philosophy, especially coming from a billionaire. It resonates because of that, whereas it might not if uttered by someone less successful.
Success leaves clues. You have to try many different things. Look at Thomas Edison and the light bulb. Watch the story about Dan Kennedy’s client with all the business cards. And remember my friend, the one he thought had failed for nine years straight. Most of these people were surrounded by others who told them they didn’t know what they were doing, that they were wasting their time, that they were never going to make it.
You’re never going to please your detractors, no matter what you do. They will always be critical, and that’s okay. But they’ve never built a statue of a critic, have they? The heroes of this world do not sit around criticizing others. They are out there making it happen. They’re out there doing it, every day. That’s what you have to do too.
Learn from the things you try. Even bugs aren’t just bugs, they’re ways you’ve discovered don’t work. You should always be looking for a better, faster, easier, simpler, more effective, and more cost-effective way of doing things. By the time you find it, you will have had a lot of experience, because you will have tried many different things, and that It will be your secret to earn all the money you want and need.
All that money is out there, waiting for you. Be good to yourself. Just because you’ve tried things in the past and failed, that doesn’t make you a failure; makes you a typical entrepreneur. Keep trying. Continue to fail. Eventually, you’re going to succeed.