By Charlotte Kemp

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it’s the same problem you had last year.

John Foster Dulles

One word I noticed that I have used quite often in this blog, is the word arrogance. I hadn’t realized how arrogant I was about my capabilities. Now I now practically speaking, that I am capable of achieving certain things. I also know that I am going to strive for some fairly awesome goals in the near future.

But I will no longer judge other people by the standards I assumed I could achieve. Some things are harder than they seem and I have learned not to assume that I would make better decisions, or cope better than others in a given situation. It is easy to look at someone else’s life and see their mistakes and poor decisions and recognize where they went wrong or what they should have done differently, and we are so quick to judge and to offer advice. Yet our own lives are so often not quite as rosy as we would have them be. We are judged and found wanting by others. And we don’t like being judged any more than they do when we do it to them.

So I will give other people the benefit of the doubt when I see them work through tough times in their lives. None of us knows what an individual has to struggle with in his or her own life and heart and mind and the decisions they have to make and the consequences they have to bear.

As for me, I am young enough to still make more mistakes in business, and in life. I may fail again. Hopefully though, I won’t repeat the same mistakes. I trust I will be stronger in the areas I have failed before and that my mistakes in the future will be less reckless than in the past.

So while no one likes to fail, discovering that life does not hand us everything on a plate, and that we have to struggle to overcome difficulties and work and plan and strive towards goals, makes our lives meaningful and worth living. I look forward to learning my next lessons. Part of me hopes it won’t be quite as painful a lesson as this one was, but I know that I couldn’t stand to stay still and not learn. Let’s see what else life has to teach us.

This blog is an exploration of the lessons I learned when my business failed. Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas, as well as your own experiences. It will eventually be published as a book – hopefully as a warning to new entrepreneurs to avoid some of these mistakes. Please see the first few posts as an introduction.

By Charlotte Kemp

When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings. Harold Geneen

When I was in the process of trying to sell the business, I encountered one potential buyer who totally intimidated me. He was not overly impressed with my marketing ideas nor my assurances of how important the business was and how disappointed the clientele would be if we closed down – which they were. He wanted to know numbers. What I did appreciate was that he didn’t want to know the numbers accountants wanted to know (and I apologize to all my accounting friends). Accountants look at a business completely objectively and without passion. In my experience they could not see any potential marketing opportunities or avenues and in fact did not even want to see the premises. But this man was there – checking out the equipment, staff, mall etc, and asking questions involving numbers:

How many clients a day?

What is their average spend?

How many clients in the shopping centre?

What is our overall profit margin?

How much do we make on average – a day, week, month?

Which is our highest turnover product?

Which is the most profitable product?

Why is that line so expensive to run?

I could not answer his questions. And then he pulled out a calculator, took the figures we eventually pulled together, and told me that I should be taking home some decent figure each month. Well, not only was I disappointed that I was not taking it home, but I was ashamed that I could not work that out myself, and that I didn’t have those figures at my fingertips to start with.

Do you recall the TV series, The District that portrayed Chief of Police Jack Mannion who comes in to clean up crime? One of the changes Mannion makes right up front, is to insist on complete and accurate data from all the police stations in the district. These are plotted on a computer program and projected on a huge wall. Every day he meets with the station commanders and is able to question them specifically on crimes committed in their jurisdictions based on his up to date information. His oversized data dashboard and insistence on following up with the people responsible for reducing crime made him very effective, although not warmly loved.

Now that is how we should be with our businesses. You can imagine Mannion’s crime dashboard displaying all the statistics across town, or perhaps a hospital emergency room’s bank of computers, beeping and chirping with life signs that doctors and nurses are trained to understand and respond to. But either way, we should have that data at our command in order to keep danger away or keep our business alive.

Sometimes we avoid the numbers because they are too scary. However, if you do not know how profitable your various product lines are, or how expensive a new piece of equipment or a new staff member is going to be, then you are putting yourself at risk. Just like with my store, you may be paying other people for the privilege of being in business while you are busy bankrupting yourself.

By Charlotte Kemp

The glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time you fall.

Unknown.

Well by now we should have come to terms with the fact that if we are living, we are going to be making mistakes and sometimes failing at things. But the real failure – being a failure as a human instead of just failing at a task, is when we give up trying.

I was on a busy flight the other day and as we took the bus from the plane to the terminal, all jostling to get on and get home, a family with about four children crammed on as well. The oldest of the boys, about 10, tripped as he stepped onto the bus and landed face first in front of all the adults with his brothers and sister behind him. There was this terrible pause as every one waited to see what would happen next. The kid wasn’t hurt, but worse than any blood would have been if his parents or any well meaning adults had made a fuss. The boy got up with dignity. His parents exclaimed a “Gosh, are you okay” to which he mumbled a reply, as he dusted himself off. And then while his parents surreptiously checked him out over the head of his siblings, we all nodded an acknowledgement that we were satisfied that all was okay and then pretended to move onto something else. No gossip or fretting or making inane comments that would embarrass him.

That is what it should be like when we trip up in life; if we fail in business or marriage or make other mistakes. Give someone a hand up, check that they are okay and are not in need of medical attention. But then don’t embarrass them with gossip or fussing. And please don’t waste time on platitudes.

Humans have a natural desire to rise again and recover from a fall. There are practical ways to support and encourage each other to do that, and of course some people appreciate more encouragement and closer relationships than others do. But the point is that we are meant to get up again, and we should. We should not define ourselves by our failures. We should not give ourselves the titles that indicate our mistakes.

There are countless examples of people who have excelled in life and business who have recovered from spectacular failures. Books have been written about them and movies have been produced. But I wanted to write this account now, while I was still struggling, still in the middle of the turmoil and pain. I wanted to write it as a reminder to myself of what I am going through so that I never take future opportunities for granted. And I wanted to write it now while things were still wrong, to show that even in the pain and through the tears, literally, I still believe that people can be successful as entrepreneurs and small business owners, and that I really do believe in the future of this country. I may not buy a franchise again in a hurry, or ever, but I believe that people should explore their opportunities for their own business. And if you can learn anything from the lessons I learned, then maybe your business will do so much better.

This blog is an exploration of the lessons I learned when my business failed. Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas, as well as your own experiences. It will eventually be published as a book – hopefully as a warning to new entrepreneurs to avoid some of these mistakes. Please see the first few posts as an introduction.