Success is About Learning to Deal with Failures

Brian Monger

Dealing with Failure

What makes the difference between ordinary and extraordinary, between average and excellent, mediocre and superb?

The line that separates those who achieve from those who don’t is different perceptions and responses to what many people consider failure.  Nothing else has such a dramatic impact on people’s ability to achieve and to accomplish their goals.

There are thousands of ways to become a winner.

Apart from luck though, each way that may bring you to success will be paved with failures.

When a situation or a circumstance happens and it doesn’t appear favourably for me at that moment, learn to detach and pull back, instead of over-reacting to the circumstances. By detaching, try stepping back and accepting that there are many situations you cannot change but you can definitely change how you view them, especially related to what most people perceive to be failure.

Did you fail?   Have you really? Did you really fail?” What did you gain, who did you meet, how did it develop character, what happened because of the situation?

As every door that closes, another – (perhaps even a window)

The reason the failure rate is so high in free enterprise is that we as a society are not prepared and not mentally conditioned to deal with the inevitable emotional roller coaster of entrepreneurship. We are taught through education, training, college, other schooling and on the job training to become good employees. We end up learning job skills, not the free-thinking skills that lead to success as an entrepreneur. Most of all we are not taught how to look at our mistakes and failures properly.

We need skills such as developing a belief, understanding how to market ourselves, how to be consistent, how to be self-motivated over time to create what is called “Internal compounding”

Internal compounding really begins with you becoming comfortable with yourself, becoming the person you deserve to be, really having a belief in yourself, a sense of certainty that no matter what obstacles, what challenges, what hurdles arrive in your way, you begin to turn these roadblocks into building blocks.

Do not compare yourself to others. You never know the price someone has paid to get to their promised land, and they did pay it at one time or another. Even the statement, “paying the price” is unusual.  Most importantly, it is imperative that you start to view your past failures differently and change how you view challenges and obstacles that face you today and in the future.

People quit too soon. They give up before barely getting started and go back to what already wasn’t working for them, giving up on their dreams. If you don’t have dreams, you end up working for people who do.

That isn’t to say, that you should not know when to move on to something else on your path to success.

Success isn’t always easy, is it?  It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. Most people quit in free enterprise in their first 90 days, six months or one year. This is a usual pattern; they don’t stay in the game long enough to learn the survival skills required to win the game of their life. They dabble, they give it a shot, they try, they wish, they hope, they’d like to, they think about it, they take little action, get their feelings hurt, test the water and, most of all, treat it like a hobby, then it costs them enough money, so they quit.

Success is about going through mind shifts, evolutions of new consciousness, getting out of the box, off the side-lines and into the game.  It is the opportunity to win the game of life on your terms, in your time frame. Quitters never win and winners never quit. Winners learn how to fail more intelligently. Isn’t it time you learned how to treat failure differently? Isn’t it time you changed how you’ve been changing?

(Really) Valuing Customer Feedback

Brian Monger

The biggest obstacle to knowing what customers really think about us is fear.

Many fear what their customers will say so the don’t ask and run from real feedback that appears to be critical.  This is very apparent in the way many firms think of  Social Media

We fear they’ll tell us our product stinks, and that we’re horrible people

Yet most organisations never hear that type of painful feedback. Successful organisations with strong word of mouth and customer devotion use customer feedback to drive their marketing strategies, product development and customer service expectations.

The less successful approach is to proactively gathering customer feedback or waiting for it arrive on its own. Research firm TARP has found that for every person who complains, there are 26 who do not. That means if you have 1,000 customers and 100 of them complain, another 260 may have quietly dumped you, never to call again. To know what customers are thinking, you need to ask.

Organisations that operate as feedback machines make improvements to their operations quickly and efficiently.

10 Rules:

1. Believe that customers are not fools and possess good ideas

How often does someone in your organisation respond to an innovative idea by saying, “Our customers don’t want that.” Asking customers to participate in your problem-solving and idea generation is not an act of weakness.

2. Gather customer feedback in every situation and at every opportunity

Every customer interaction is an opportunity for feedback.

3. Focus on continual improvement

As Peter Drucker once said, a business has two purposes: marketing and innovation. Enlist the aid of your highly affiliated, passionate customers to help you improve your business.

4. Actively solicit good and bad feedback

Try asking “what is the one thing you would change or improve about your experience with us or our product?”

5. You do not have to spend a lot of money doing it

Short, regular surveys deliver better response rates and allow you to react rapidly to issues raised. Solve one or two problems at a time, not everything at once. Tell your customers how their feedback directly contributed to your changes.

6. Seek real-time feedback

Call 8-10 customers every day.   (this takes some skills – I can help you get them)

7. Make it easy for customers to provide feedback 

Employ multiple input points: in person, email, Web sites, point-of-purchase cards or receipts, conferences and the telephone.

8. Leverage technology to aid your efforts

Programs like SurveyMonkey.com makes it very easy to gather feedback via a Web-based survey. It (among others) is fast, efficient, and inexpensive. It automatically tabulates data and doesn’t require a techie to launch. Your data is virtually complete within 48 hours of sending customers a link to the survey.

9. Share customer feedback throughout the organisation

Responsibility for customer feedback extends beyond the marketing department. Ensure that everyone in the organisation knows what customers are thinking by sharing customer feedback; product and service decisions will be better informed as a result.

10. Use the feedback to make changes – quickly

You may not be able to move a mountain in a day, but you can make it easier to climb by making a path.