Success Or Failure Is Often Determined By Internal And Not External Factors

Why is it that some school owners can open a school under the worst of conditions, yet meet with great success…

While others may open their business under the best of conditions and fail miserably?

I think it’s apparent that success or failure is more often determined by internal rather than external factors.

And I would have to say that, in most cases, it has to do with three qualities: confidence, commitment, and the willingness to experience failure.

Confidence As An Indicator Of Business Success

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t – you are right.”

- Henry Ford

Can you doubt yourself and succeed in business?

Certainly, every would-be business owner experiences self-doubt at some point. However, I’d have to say that the ability to garner and grow self-belief and self-confidence is one of the great indicators of future business success in budding entrepreneurs.

Not too long ago, I was speaking with a fellow business person regarding the success her son was achieving in a new venture. Fresh out of high school, with no business experience to speak of, he and his close friend decided to start a company designing and selling specialty skateboarding equipment. And, they are doing fabulously at it.

Her one observation regarding why she believes they’re meeting with success? “So many young people these days realize that they don’t have to ask anyone for permission to succeed. They just do it.”

She’s quite right, you know. I felt the same way when I first decided to open my own school. People kept telling me things like:

• “Don’t you need financing and backing to do that?”
• “Don’t you need to do that in a big town?”
• “Don’t you need experience or an education in business to start one?”
• “You’ll never make any money doing that. Why you don’t you just go to school instead?”

And so on. What these people didn’t realize is that I wasn’t operating under the same assumptions they were. Instead of seeing limitations, all I saw were possibilities.

Did I have financing and backing? Nope. I came from a dirt poor background, and had actually been homeless a few times in the years leading up to my starting my first school.

Did I open my first successful school in a big town? Nope. The population was less than 30,000 people.

Did I have any business experience or education? None to speak of. However, by the time I finally did succeed, I had plenty of experience with failure. (See the quote from Thomas J. Watson, Sr. below for an explanation of why that worked in my favor.)

Yet, the one thing I did have was confidence. Confidence in my ability to teach great classes, confidence in my worth as an instructor, confidence that I was going to succeed eventually – it was just a matter of time.

And, that confidence worked in my favor at every step of the way.

• I had no compunctions about approaching the owners and managers of potential locations regarding renting space from them.
• Despite not having a degree, I had no reservations about approaching the local university with a proposition to teach in their kinesiology department.
• And, most importantly, I had confidence in droves when it came to selling memberships for my programs.

That last point I believe to be the most important one with regards to confidence. You see, when you don’t believe in your own product, you are destined to fail. That’s because if you don’t believe in what you’re selling, that it’s the absolute best solution to the prospect’s problems, wants, or needs, then the prospect in turn won’t believe it either.

You must believe in your product or service in order to be successful at selling it to others. And that’s what makes confidence such an important indicator of success for martial art school owners – your confidence directly affects your ability to attract students.

Commitment – The Quality Every Successful Entrepreneur Shares

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

- Albert Einstein

How committed are you to succeeding in your business? Committed enough to experience failure, over and over again until you meet with success?

You may believe that people who meet with success are “lucky” or that there really are “overnight successes” in the business world. However, the real truth behind so-called overnight success stories is that it often takes years of work and preparation before success is achieved.

If you haven’t read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, I strongly encourage you to pick it up at your earliest opportunity. In it, Gladwell provides an engaging and fascinating explanation of how extremely successful people are not just the result of fortunate circumstances. Rather, their success is most often the result of their being extremely persistent in the practice of taking full advantage of every opportunity they’re given.

In short, they commit to years and years of practice in honing their skills and sharpening their knowledge, so when they are finally provided with a unique opportunity they are fully capable of leveraging that opportunity to it’s fullest advantage. Or, as the great Roman philosopher Seneca said many centuries ago:

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” – Seneca

In summary, it’s hard. That’s why commitment is a prerequisite to success in business.

The Willingness to Experience Failure

“It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You’re thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all.”

- Thomas J. Watson, the former president of IBM who took the company into it’s grand heyday of success during the 30′s, 40′s, and 50′s.

Thomas Watson knew what another more famous Thomas (the inventor of the light bulb) also knew – that success often only comes after you’ve met with failure and become great friends.

But if that’s so, why is it that people are so often afraid to fail? Especially those of us who are teachers, and accustomed to coaching our students through failure after failure as they learn to perform complex and difficult physical skills?

Plain and simple, it has to do with our fear of what others think. We are, as social beings, driven by a need to be admired and accepted by others. To risk the disapproval of those around us goes against our basest instincts.

But once you eliminate your fear and worry regarding what other people think about you, you’ll experience freedom and power like you’ve never felt before.

Even so, there’s a flip side to being willing to experience failure, and it’s one that trips up many a would-be business owner.

What I’m about to say is a harsh truth, but it’s one that every business owner needs to come to grips with in order to succeed as an entrepreneur.

• The moment you start blaming outside influences for the failure of your business, you start down a slippery slope of giving yourself excuses to fail.

Personal responsibility for your success or failure in business goes hand in hand with being willing to fail in order to succeed. The flip side of failure is learning from your mistakes, and it’s impossible to do so when you don’t believe you’ve made any.

So, make failure your friend by taking personal responsibility for your failures, and also by learning from each and every one so you are one step closer to success with every subsequent failure you experience.

In Closing

At the risk of being glib, let me say that true and lasting success really only comes after great sacrifice. It takes confidence to take that on, commitment to see it through, and a willingness to fail in order to improve and become the person you need to be to shoulder that success.

Yes, it’s hard. But you didn’t give up on the road to black belt… so why in the world would you give up on the road to success as a martial arts school owner? If you’re a black belt, you’re better than that. So, have confidence in your ability to succeed and your worth as an instructor, gut it out, and take every setback as a lesson that brings you one step closer to your goal.

Then, when you finally arrive, you can look back on your hard work and dedication and say to yourself, “Well done.”

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