“Don’t fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts, it is glorious even fail.”
I am in the middle of making a business hard decision, and while I was looking for my favorite part of Kung Fu Panda movie to settle my mind with the great messages it has, I found that powerful, wise, and refreshing quote from the legendary Bruce Lee. What wisdom behind that magnificent human being, who I can define in one word: exceptional. Those words relieve my solopreneur’s soul pain.
I wonder what a man like Jocko Willink or Joel “Thor” Neeb could say about that quote from Bruce Lee. Navy seals and Fighter Pilots of the US Army are taught that failure is not an option. – I will ask them, and I will come back with their answers to share them with you –
Learn how to accept defeat
This learning could be crucial if you are in the mission of doing business. And more when the Pivot plan becomes evident. After 21 years in the same location, I decided to move to a bigger one and include my daughter´s coaching as a professional ballet dancer. What about creating something new? Something that does not exist in my city, like a bilingual dance academy with a comfortable coffee shop (I love to bake), and why not include my Day Spa services there as well? All in one! Amazing right? Wrong! In a Tony Robbins coaching, he said that pioneers take the arrows. So true!
Let’s do it big, I said. So, I sold my properties, to be clearer; one apartment and one house to make it count. For some reason, I waited that long to make this decision, I thought.
I found an almost dead property (abandoned), and as a fearless entrepreneur, I decided to revive that corpse. I did it before with the precious location and it wasn´t that bad. Let´s do it again, but this time BIG! The investment took more than half of my patrimony, the result of my almost 40 years in action (I took my first job when I was 11 years old).
I made the grand opening of my business on the last weekend of February 2020, and we had to close almost the next day!
Then after four years in this battle, came the scene of the most fearful process of any entrepreneur and that is the PIVOT plan. Let’s face it, you will not invest in benchmarking as franchises do. No, you come with all your passion and determination taking the necessary risks to make your new business work, you are the best at what you do, and your idea is totally new and good, why it won’t work?
The Pivot Plan; Pros and Cons
The word “pivot” is standard language in the world of startups and vision masters, CEOs, and Founders that go out on a limb to see their dream become reality.
In business, it means to turn sharply without changing position and thereby not giving up any advantages. Such a definition, that in my experience, sounds like the perfect Ken, the dream of the prince charming coming on his white horse to save the lady, of course, this scenario is for super successful enterprises the daily bread, but you, as your boss you won´t even think about it.
Quitting is what a pivot is not. Could be considered as quitting when you close a location to laser focus on the next step? “Quitters never win, and winners never quit”, I had the quote on one wall of my business location. Is part of an entrepreneur’s behavior to make changes, pivoting, reopening, or creating from scratch a whole new thing, or a whole new strategy for re-creating a whole new thing for the same business, for an extension of it, or for another completely different as well, but as the majority of the entrepreneurs, you are more focus on creating and making it work than in the exit plan.
The Final Score
The Oriental culture teaches: to open a new path, to create a whole new thing you must let go of the old thing. The occidental culture says it this way: do something that makes it impossible for yourself to turn back, burn your ships!
Very wise but still painful and at the same time exciting! “Excitement” is the blood of all entrepreneurs´ souls.
Coming back to those words from a legend, I will take them as the wisdom shared by an exceptional mentor. Learning how to accept defeat doesn’t mean that you are defeated, it means learning to have peace of mind despite it, so you won’t lose focus. Then failure is no more than a mental state.
In summary, doing business is like being a novice parent, somebody did it before, but you must experiment on your own until your business and you become one.
Like people say in my country, “Nobody experiments in someone else´s head”.
My blog called “Behind the Scenes” will be ready soon. More details about how not to do business in my next blog post.
See you in the area…
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