Success comes from what you overcome

There’s a woman in my neighborhood, a busy mom, who had a stroke last year. The sudden, life-threatening illness came out of the blue for this young, healthy woman.

As is common after a stroke, she experienced difficulties with memory loss, dizziness when walking and just getting back her former mental quickness.  But, as her husband shared with me, she remained positive and fought for the small wins every day.

She persevered, and now you would never know she’d had a stroke. It’s the kind of attitude and tenaciousness I see in only the most successful business owners.

If you listen to the business experts, you’ll hear a lot about strategy. Build a plan and work that plan. That’s important, of course, but most of those plans never go exactly as you laid them out on paper.

There are always bumps in the road, either because of something you did or didn’t do, or because of outside factors beyond your control, like 9-11, a new competitor, or a serious illness in your family.

For some business owners, these challenges knock them down and out. Others get up again and fight. For them, barriers are setbacks on the path to growth and development.

As entrepreneurs, the vast majority of us are optimistic by nature. We are glass half full kind of people. You have to be, otherwise you’d never take the leap of faith to start (or buy) a business in the first place. In fact, when I ask business owners to tell me what they expect in the next year, very few have ever told me that business would decline.

And no doubt, many businesses see that optimism play out. But when it doesn’t, you need the tenacity to keep going. When the inevitable challenges come along, you need to hold on to that optimism and combine it with a healthy dose of hard work to fight through whatever obstacle is in front of you.

Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, has a unique relationship with failure. Growing up, her father would ask, “What did you fail at today?” When she didn’t have an answer, he expressed disappointment.

She learned to reframe failure. Instead of seeing it as a negative outcome, failure became linked to the bravery of stretching outside your comfort zone and reaching for lofty goals. Today she is recognized as the youngest, self-made female billionaire.

Michael Jordan, another example, was devastated when he didn’t make his high school variety basketball team. In response, he worked harder to prove himself. He’s said, “I’ve failed over and over in my life, and that is why I succeed.”

Great accomplishments aren’t always about our skills and talents. More often, they’re about what we have the perseverance to overcome.

 

By Scott Bushkie