Be thankful for the difficult times. During those times you grow.
Be thankful for your limitations, because they give you opportunities for improvement.
Be thankful for each new challenge, because it will build your strength and character.

Be thankful for your mistakes. They will teach you valuable lessons.
Be thankful when you’re tired and weary, because it means you’ve made a difference.

It’s easy to be thankful for the good things. A life of rich fulfillment comes to those who are also thankful for the setbacks. Gratitude can turn a negative into a positive. Find a way to be thankful for your troubles, and they can become your blessings.

In World War 1, the Generals of the British army on the Western Front delegated the task of engaging the German army, to the soldiers.  Their assignment was to literally kill as many Germans as possible and gain territory.  Unfortunately for the Generals, the soldiers failed in this role temporarily as peace broke out, particularly focused over Christmas Day 1914.  Enemy soldiers played football, shared stories, ate together and even exchanged a few small gifts.  The British Generals had to literally reinforce the order to kill by threatening court marshal in order to sabotage the spontaneous truce and restart the war.

Their delegation failed.  And that is why military organizations are so often rigid and allow so little opportunity for spontaneity, creativity and free thought – just in case we discover that we can have peace instead of war.

We often resort to the same in our own lives and organizations, imposing rigid rules and controls because we don’t trust that those around us; staff, employees, family members, have the same creativity, innovativeness and or dedication to the goal as we ourselves do.  That perhaps they don’t have our best interests at heart. So we seek to impose our order on everyone else.

I am often asked what I would do differently if I started a business again having learnt my mistakes, and this is one of the lessons I would pay particular attention to.  We must learn how to delegate effectively in order to expand our reach.

But delegating is a skill that has many parts.  It is not just about giving up control.  It is also about finding the right person in the first place.  The person has to buy into the vision for the task at hand.  You have to prepare both the person for the task and the task for the hand over.  There has to be a period of feedback and mentoring and then a time when you trust that the person now ‘owns’ that job and will run with it and contemplate it in ways that you now no longer have an opportunity to do.

When the British Generals left their soldiers to engage the enemy, they didn’t expect them to find a way to bring peace to the region.  Perhaps they hadn’t really communicated the ‘vision’ clearly enough and that is why the control had to be maintained and constantly imposed from that point on.  But if we can equip even one person to be on our side then our progress will be so much more rapid and sure than if we are trying to force march a reluctant team towards a goal that they don’t believe in.

Please feel free to share your experience of mistakes or failures with us.  And if you are a resource that could help other small business owners, then you are welcome to post your information here (or on the Facebook page) as well.  The original Lesson #4 is here.

“I’m Not Afraid of the F Word” can be ordered from any book store.  The distributor is Redline books and they can be contacted on christopher@redlinebooks.co.za or 021 557 2146.  Charlotte Kemp is available to speak on the subject of “I’m Not Afraid of the F Word” to entrepreneur groups or the subject of “The Art of Failure” to corporate groups.

And you never meet the same person twice.

Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie, in a talk titled “The danger of a single story” explains how so often we hear only one story about a person or a country or even a situation, and we draw all our conclusions from that single perspective.  And then sometimes we are disappointed, and feel betrayed or foolish when we discover the deeper layers to the story.  But in reality our lives are composed of overlapping stories and to forget that means we risk misunderstanding people, sometimes to a dangerous level.

If we know that we ourselves are complex, every changing and growing people, then we have to believe that of other people too.  Don’t assume that the friend you saw last 5 months ago is going to be the same forever.  When your child goes away to varsity, expect to meet a new person coming home.  They have grown and experienced new things and made decisions on their own.  Discover who they are again.  Allow your partner to grow in your relation, and keep close enough to discover who they are as they change, so that you don’t wake up one morning next to a stranger.

Through the course of all of this, be tolerant about how each person handles their own failure, and the failure of others; how people respond to your failure.  We can only do what we are capable of doing at any point in our lives.

If you fail at any important aspect of your life, there are people who are going to come along side you and support and encourage you.  But others will judge, criticize and reject you.  Those people may have their own fears, their own failures that condemn them and make them feel uncomfortable around you because your failure points at their own weakness.

In terms of the people you meet every day, remember that you never meet the same person twice.  You don’t know what your colleague has experienced since you last met.  You don’t know what your competitor, your client, your prospect has gone through since you last conversed, concluded a deal or closed a door on a negotiation.  There is always change in both of your lives and as you change there is the opportunity for a new solution today that may have been impossible last week.

So don’t pre-judge people.  In the same way that you would like them to be open to the fact that you have changed and grown, give them the same chance.  Especially the people you think you know well.  That way you won’t get caught out by people cheating you, or be overly surprised by people blessing you with wonderful responses.

Please feel free to share your experience of mistakes or failures with us.  And if you are a resource that could help other small business owners, then you are welcome to post your information here (or on the Facebook page) as well.  This is a link to the original Lesson #3.

“I’m Not Afraid of the F Word” can be ordered from any book store.  The distributor is Redline books and they can be contacted on christopher@redlinebooks.co.za or 021 557 2146.  Charlotte Kemp is available to speak on the subject of “I’m Not Afraid of the F Word” to entrepreneur groups or the subject of “The Art of Failure” to corporate groups.

If I were to prepare a bucket list, listening to Luciano Pavarotti sing live would have been on it.  And I was extremely privileged to experience this in one of his last live performances in Pretoria shortly before his death.

What made Pavarotti so incredible and universally recognized and loved?  I am certainly no opera fan, I very rarely attend concerts and seldom even buy CD’s and yet I was moved to tears by his music.

Besides his obvious initial talent, it turns out that there was a focus and dedication in his life that concentrated all his energies and passion into his music.

A story from his youth will illustrate this.  Although he studied to be a teacher, even enrolling at teachers college, his own father had introduced him to music, urged him to develop his voice and encouraged him to study under a professional tenor.

When Pavarotti graduated from teachers college, he asked his father whether he should be a singer or a teacher.  His father replied, ‘Luciano, if you try to sit on two chairs, you will fall between them. For life, you must choose one chair.’

It took him seven years of study before he had a professional appearance and an additional seven years before reached the Metropolitan Opera, but Luciano Pavarotti’s decision to choose one chair for his life meant that he focused his energy to develop his skill into something absolutely world class, something that could reduce cynical people to tears.

We can all do more than one thing.  We can dabble in more than one business or profession and split our attention.  Most of us do this because we are running scared.  But we cannot excel, we cannot be world class, we will never be exceptional nor wealthy if we do not focus our attention on just the one thing.

‘Luciano,’ my father replied, ‘if you try to sit on two chairs, you will fall between them. For life, you must choose one chair.’ “I chose one. It took seven years of study and frustration before I made my first professional appearance. It took another seven to reach the Metropolitan Opera. And now I think whether it’s laying bricks, writing a book–whatever we choose–we should give ourselves to it. Commitment, that’s the key. Choose one chair.”

Luciano Pavarotti

Please feel free to share your experience of mistakes or failures with us.  And if you are a resource that could help other small business owners, then you are welcome to post your information here (or on the Facebook page) as well.

“I’m Not Afraid of the F Word” can be ordered from any book store.  The distributor is Redline books and they can be contacted on christopher@redlinebooks.co.za or 021 557 2146.  Charlotte Kemp is available to speak on the subject of “I’m Not Afraid of the F Word” to entrepreneur groups or the subject of “The Art of Failure” to corporate groups.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

For people who value business and money and financial independence, the issues of business are important.  We consume information about business and probably network with a number of other business people too.  Yet on occasion we will encounter the person who has such different values in their life that we have the opportunity to reevaluate our own decisions.  Those are the artists or creatives in life rather than the pure business people.

Many of us are in business by default.  We have left full time employment through various circumstances, and taken our skills and hopefully some sort of financial capital along with our intellectual capital and invested both into an enterprise of our own.  We have either set up something independently or purchased a franchise.  Out of necessity we have had to generate the income we need to stay alive.

But what if we don’t actually have what it takes to run that business?  What if we don’t want to run that business?

I think too many people are running businesses into the ground and failing because they are neither equipped nor interested in the business of business.  They may love what they do, in the theme of their business, but not what happens around that.  In that case I urge some serious introspection and either that they desist before losing more money and affecting lives, or that they find a business partner who is more interested in the business itself than in the theme of what the originator was doing.

For the rest, who love what they are doing and want to be in business and still lack those skills; well we need to go back to school.  Since I lost my business I have become aware of countless resources, courses, materials and coaches that to various degrees could have assisted me and helped to avoid the failure of my business.  I lost a franchise store after 2 years, a very large amount of money, lost my personal financial reserves and retrenched 6 staff including family members.  This is not an experience I intend to go through again, so know that I am taking my lessons seriously; humbly and very seriously.

I love what I do.  I love speaking and teaching and writing.  I love crafting messages and working with ideas and concepts.  And occasionally I remember to invoice clients and consider cash flow.  Apparently that makes for bad business practice and my various financial advisors are not at all impressed.  Frankly I find it very frustrating and I get upset at having to stop the creative, important part of what I do for clients, to do the important part of what I must do for my own business.  If I do not however, I will fail again.  And that is why I have been learning those lessons and applying them as carefully as possible to this current business.

Please feel free to share your experience of mistakes or failures with us.  And if you are a resource that could help other small business owners, then you are welcome to post your information here (or on the Facebook page) as well.

“I’m Not Afraid of the F Word” can be ordered from any book store.  The distributor is Redline books and they can be contacted on christopher@redlinebooks.co.za or 021 557 2146.  Charlotte Kemp is available to speak on the subject of “I’m Not Afraid of the F Word” to entrepreneur groups or the subject of “The Art of Failure” to corporate groups.

I wrote the original book, “I’m Not Afraid of the F Word, 50 Lessons Learned on the Way to Business Failure” for a number of reasons.

• As an account of my failure to let others know of what foolish mistakes and arrogance can cost them
• As a record for myself so that I will recognize my own mistakes sooner rather than later and not repeat them when I go into business again
• And for the sake of my daughters, so that when they grow up and look back on this part of their history, there will be an explanation for what their mother went through, and hopefully, part of the reason why I would have recovered from it.  I do not want them to be afraid of business, of being entrepreneurial, just because I failed once.  In fact, I don’t want anyone to be afraid to go into business, in spite of the statistics of business failure.   I simply want us to be aware that there are risks, that they can be mitigated and that the eventual reward will be worth it if we apply some uncommon sense to the enterprise.

I am very grateful for the support, encouragement and feedback I have received over the last 2 years since my business failed and since I started speaking about it.  And I am also grateful for the people, mostly women, who have come to me for advice or encouragement for themselves, when they found themselves in similar circumstances.  I have been honoured to be able to talk with, encourage, but mostly just listen to some people to make decisions about their business lives and to know that there are people who have not lost businesses or money, because they looked at my example and made better decisions because of what they saw.  That is worth telling my story for.

Please feel free to pass on this post to others and encourage them to subscribe to the feed or the Facebook page.  I would also love to hear your comments and feedback, as well as your good and bad business decisions.  Even anonymously.  But please do share.  You will feel better for it.

“I’m Not Afraid of the F Word” can be ordered from any book store.  The distributor is Redline books and they can be contacted on christopher@redlinebooks.co.za or 021 557 2146.

There once was an oyster whose story I tell,
Who found that sand had got under his shell;
Just one little grain, but it gave him much pain,
For oysters have feelings although they’re so plain.

Now, did he berate the working of Fate
Which had led him to such a deplorable state?
Did he curse out the Government, call for an election?
No; as he lay on the shelf, he said to himself,
“If I cannot remove it, I’ll try to improve it.”

So the years rolled by as the years always do,
And he came to his ultimate destiny—stew.

And this small grain of sand which had bothered him so,

Was a beautiful pearl, all richly aglow.

Now this tale has a moral—for isn’t it grand

What an oyster can do with a morsel of sand;
What couldn’t we do if we’d only begin
With all of the things that get under our skin.

Author Unknown

One of the women who owns and runs her own business, recounted when she faced one of those the life changing points in her career.  She had a young child and new baby and was already juggling the demands of motherhood, her marriage and her business career when she realised that one of her children had serious health issues that required more attention than she was able to give at that moment in time.

I am ashamed to say that while I listened to her story about to unfold, I was quickly trying to work out what she gave up, because I knew her business was still going strong, as was her marriage, but surely in order to give more attention to one area of our lives, we have to give up something else.   But what she said next taught me such humility that I felt like I should go back to Business 101.

“I knew that I was the only one who could take care of my child.  I am the mother.  So to take care of my child and my family, and not lose my business, the only solution was to expand my business.”

How many of us would do the exact opposite?  Contract the business?  Pull back.  Put things into maintenance mode until we can come back and grab the reins again.  Instead she outsourced, delegated, trusted and brought people in to take her business to places that she wasn’t able to go to at that time.  It grew bigger while it was out of her immediate control.  When she was ready to come back, she did reshuffle things, but she took the reins of a bigger and better business than she left.

Now that is the example of a big business thinker; someone who is not afraid of taking a risk and whose risk is paying such awesome dividends now.

Are we prepared to trust the people we work with to that extent?  Have we hired well?  Have we partnered with the right kind of people?  Are we strong enough to recover if we haven’t done so?  But we certainly cannot do it all ourselves and survive anyway.  She would have lost something had she held onto it all, but in giving up some control and trusting others whom she had already mentored, she was rewarded with exponential business growth and still has a happy and strong home life.

As for me; I take Jim Rohn’s advice seriously: make sure you are not the smartest person in the room.  I am privileged to learn from people far smarter and more experienced than I am.

We all want that first place and strive for it, even if part of us knows that it is unattainable.   And regardless of our envy, that fact that someone, anyone in a particular contest, can win first place, means that we have a shot at it too.

Sometimes though, more, shall we say, ‘gentle folk’ want to eliminate such derogatory terms as ‘loser’ because they fear it may hurt the sensitivities of the individuals involved, especially when they are children.  But you cannot remove only one side of a coin.  You cannot take away the chance to be hurt without also removing the chance to be a hero.  And children need to learn how to handle disappointments early in life, not to toughen them up, but so that they can learn the skills of striving for the position of winner early.

So we need to appreciate losers for their vital role in holding that position so that the role of winner is available to be coveted.  And secondly, we cannot eliminate the position of ‘loser’ from the field.  How else would we know whether we have won or not.

But a few days ago, my father wrote this letter to our local morning TV station and it was read aloud and commented on.  I think my father has managed to capture the situation so well and I am grateful for his expressing it so much better than I could have.  So here is his letter.

Dear Vuyo and Leanne

Some time ago, elephants were introduced into the Pilansberg Game Reserve. They proceeded to cause much havoc and destruction with their unruly behaviour.

To remedy the situation some older, mature bulls were brought in to teach them manners and discipline.

We have a similar situation now on the political front, with the young rouges using language and actions that threaten racial and economic instability.

The current set of “Bulls” are pre-occupied with power struggles, in fighting, cover up’s and denials, and not setting an example that inspires respect, nevermind reform. On the weekend it was reported that Zuma’s ratings have dropped to an all time low. On Monday the headline reads that Malema is defiant in the face of Zuma’s reprimand. The “Bulls” are toothless and powerless. It is said that a fish rots from the head down, and the present leadership is proving the point.

There is only one “Bull” who commands universal respect, and who might be able to stem the tide. Sadly he has chosen to remain silent, yet as a former Head of State and still member of the party it is surly not disloyal to be critical. For the sake of his legacy, for the sake of this country Mandela needs to be heard from, and all the bulls need to head his message.

Lastly, the press corp. SHAME ON YOU. You should all have got up and walked out of that press conference in support not only of the BBC man, but your estate.

Regards

JJ

Kloof