Business Success – You May Have To Go The Extra Mile More Than Once

Tenacious Terrier

“You may have to fight a battle
more than once to win it.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925 – )
first woman in European history
elected prime minister

Quiz any successful business owner on the topic of business success strategies and they will tell you, fundamental to your success in business (or in life for that matter) is your ability to stay the course. Margaret Thatcher was famously dubbed the ‘Iron Lady’ and she was fond of saying “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.”
Now, love her or hate her, one thing we probably do all agree on is that Mararet Thatcher was not a woman to give up lightly. She would see her fight, jump in both feet and both fists and not let go until the victory was hers. This quality of tenacity, this ability to hang on and ‘live to fight another day’ is absolutely key to success. While dogged determination cannot claim to be the most glamorous of leadership qualities, it is nonetheless widely regarded as one of the most essential. In his ‘bible of success’, “Think & Grow Rich”, Napoleon Hill cites Persistence as the 8th master key to riches, acknowledging that whilst “there may be no heroic connotation to the word ‘persistence’, the quality is to character what carbon is to steel”. Having interviewed more than 500 of the most successful people America has ever known and personally seen 1st hand the rewards that persistence brings, Hill concluded: “I don’t know why more people don’t just keep on keeping on”. A sentiment echoed by William Feather when he said “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have given up”. Indeed, many of the people that Hill interviewed, confessed to the author that their “greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them”. This is well illustrated in the story of Thomas Edison who ‘failed’ over 10,000 times in his quest to realise his invention of the electric light bulb. I say ‘failed’, what I mean is he met with ‘temporary defeat’ over 10,000 times before success came to him. That is tenacious. That is a leader. Edison knew that the only way to fail was to give up – and giving up was simply not in his vocabulary. There is a very apt Japanese proverb that I think that embodies perfectly the attitude that all winners have: “Fall seven times, stand up eight”.

The point here is not that successful business owners glibly trot through life oblivious to the pitfalls or that they are so thick-skinned that life just bounces off them without them ever noticing or getting knocked back. Even when you are a leader, falling down still hurts. The point is that life’s leaders are on a mission. And they know that it may take more than one shot to score. They have a goal and they are following that goal with laser-like vision. Their goal, their desire, their dream is burning with such passion inside of them that it continues to drive them even when it looks to the rest of the world as though their fuel gauge has hit empty. Allen Steble hit the nail on the head when he observed: “A determined person doesn’t find it hard to succeed; they find it hard to stop trying”.
That is not to say that it is always easy to stay on track toward your business success. Some days we all have to pick ourselves up and shake the terrier inside of us. Winston Churchill obviously knew what it felt like to have to goad the weary warrior within when he said, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm”. And some days we all feel as though we have met with temporary defeat on that one. So if all of this tough talk sounds a little bit daunting and you don’t feel as though you have enough of the terrier inside you to make it through the tough times, remember just to ‘keep on keeping on’. Rouse the terrier inside of you, add this article to your arsenal of business success strategies, grab hold of your passions and get back in the fight.

I will leave the last word to Johni Pangalila:

There are so many ways to fail but only one way to succeed; NEVER GIVE UP!

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