Bill Gates once started a business called Traf-O-Data. Colonel Sanders recipe was rejected over 1000 times before he founder KFC. Henry Fords’ first two car companies left him broke, and Walt Disney was fired because “he lacked imagination and had no original ideas.” These are just a few iconic brand builders that many might have classified as failures at one point in time. There is honor in playing the game, and failure should be worn as a badge of courage. You really only fail if you stop trying.
I’ve never quite understood why people are so insecure when it comes to failure. Think of it this way; you haven’t failed until you quit. Failing is a natural part of life, and if you are growing, it’s virtually impossible not to experience failure hundreds of times throughout your life. The biggest mistake people make when experiencing failure is refusing to look at it as a learning or growing experience.
I often say, “when you fail, fail fast, learn from it and press ahead.” I’ve had good fortune of having dozens of friends who have accumulated unbelievable wealth and success in their life. All of us have the same sentiment towards success, and every one of us realizes that success is nearly impossible without failures.
The other unfortunate behavior that comes with having a fear of failure is you tend to play it safe in every aspect of life. This can prove to be detrimental to your success as most opportunities have a limited shelf life. I’ve seen this countless times where companies have a great idea with huge consumer adoption potential, but they fail to seize the opportunity.
Creating a winning idea or product is really difficult to dy. You will need to overcome countless adverse situations as you plow though your road to success. Once you see that glimmer of opportunity, it’s so critical that you pounce on it like a lion. This is not the time to play it safe; now is the time to double down with the necessary human and financial capital to seize the opportunity. It’s time to gain momentum and take market share.
What would you accomplish in your life if you never left your fear stop you?
I am amazed how often I meet people who have such an unrealistic perspective on what it takes to become successful– both mentally, physically, and financially. I don’t know at what point in our society, people got the mindset that they’re going to walk into a company and immediately start at a C level position.
Despite what they may have told you in college, in most cases the real world doesn’t work like that. In fact, in most cases, you’re going to start at an entry-level position and work your way up through the company’s ranks based on the merits of your passion, commitment to excellence, and your ability to lead others.
Your mind is the only thing you can control, and you get to create any narrative you want. Ae you a victim who thinks negatively of rejection? If something goes wrong, do you ask yourself, “why does this always happen to me?” or do you pick yourself up and take the hill again?
If you take nothing else away from this book, I would like to give you the gift of turning your failures into success. The gift of creating a muse that will inspire you to get up when you are tired and to keep going after you’ve failed. Face every opportunity with gratitude and with the understanding that failure is progress. Your attitude towards failure is the only thing holding you back. Why do some people take the word “no” as rejection? While others say “no” is one step closer to a yes.
Earlier in this book, I shared the day my brother and I decided to quit college. We both knew we wanted to be in business for ourselves, although it was probably a fairly reckless decision-making process as I look at it today. It proved to change myself, and my twin brothers life forever.
When I was given the opportunity to turn around a failing health club, my brother and I put our heads together and thought about what would ignite his fire. I love my brother’s story because he envisioned himself owning an athletic shoe store, similar to that of a Footlocker. At first, he dreamed of owning one store.
Once he accomplished that goal and the store was profitable, he immediately shifted his focus to opening his second store.
Through this process of continually looking for the next hill, he was able to grow his dream into a national shoe store chain called Athletic Fitters. My brother loved FooLocker, he would say that he would open up a store just like it.
Our father’s grocery store was right across the street, and my dad always warned him to stay away from the big mall. The rent was too high, and it wasn’t a good business idea. As you’ve probably guessed, you can’t tell a Taunton that we shouldn’t do something or it’s impossible because we will do everything in our power to chase our dreams.
My brother took the leap and opened an athletic shoe store in the big mall. he had no retail experience, and we put our cas up as collateral to start his store. His business exploded, and before you knew it, his sales had quadrupled. He was disciplined, and every dollar he earned, he reinvested back into his business.
We watched our father do this for years. WE saw first-hand that reinvesting in yourself and your business int he areas of operational and vertical integration would pay huge dividends when executed properly. Our father expanded his grocery store four times. At one point, my father bough a chicken farm so he could produce his own eggs and sell them through his grocery store. That’s how committed he was to success and those were the lessons he passed to myself and my brother.
That discipline inspire and instilled the confidence to push my brother into thinking beyond owning just one store, but instead scaling to 104 locations before eventually selling to the company that inspired him, Footlocker. I know what you are thinking, “Peter, success must just run in your family.”
Success doesn’t run in my family; however, passion, dedication, discipline, accountability, and execution must run in the family.
While he was collecting his life-changing pay day, I was still running that first club making $70K per year. I wasn’t struggling, but I must admit how difficult it was to watch my brother and not feel a sense of envy. For me, this would become my inspiration.
Think about how you would feel in this situation. Would you use this as fire in your belly to push you towards success? Or would you say, “well I guess I just wasn’t the lucky brother; maybe he will loan me some money?” The story you tell yourself will directly correlate with your results. I wasn’t jealous of my brother and given how fiercely competitive we were against each other; I appreciated that he never once rubbed my nose in it. I was fired up because I knew I had what it took to win, and it just wasn’t my time yet.
Use your inspiration to get going and fight for what you want in the face of adversity. You may have heard stories of Michael Jordan using his own dark inspiration to fuel his success. Michal Jordan would create stories in his head about his opponents and use them to fuel him on the court. He passed this mental edge onto Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant famously talks about his relationship with his muse when he became the “Black Mamba.” This was a mental edge that would allow them both to reach deep, no matter how tired they wee, to will themselves to victory.
Michael Jordan didn’t stop trying because he couldn’t beat the Detroit Pistons. He didn’t throw a pity party because they were beating him up. He used this as fuel and motivation to level up his game both on and off the court. He added weight, worked harder, sacrificed to become a better teammate, and use his failures as fuel to win six championships. Michale Jordan didn’t win his first championship until 1993. The Bulls drafted him in 1984. Many might have said he would never climb his impossible hill if you just looked at his early career.
When I saw my brother succeed the way he had, I used it as fuel, and nothing would stop me from accomplishing my goals. You can draw inspiration from your critics, even if your biggest critic is yourself. I always kept my father’s inspiration and brothers’ success top of mind, using it as fuel and proof that hard work works.
Think about the people in your life that have said you couldn’t accomplish your goals. Do you believe it, or do you brush it off? Muse or not, I can’t stress enough the importance of surrounding yourself with people that fan your flame as opposed to dousing it. Life is unpredictable, and the uncertainty can create doubt in ourselves. Those are perfectly normal emotions that we all have. It’s essential to surround ourselves with like-minded people who prop us up in difficult or challenging times. Failure is never final.
At one point, we tried to write our own operating software at Snap Fitness. My development team was confident they could do it, while building the software, we found it cost 3X more than expected, took longer than predicted, and took up far more human and financial resources than it was worth. After several years of frustration, we decided to stop future development so that software and transitioned to a company whose core competency was developing software. Instead of building it ourselves, we had them cater and customize to meet our needs. Every thriving company has mini-failures and setbacks along the way. the best companies use those setbacks as learning experiences on their journey towards success.
It also let me to look into every process within our company. I did a deep dive and learned early on in my company’s history that if I didn’t own it, I couldn’t control it or set the bar for my customers’ experience. This led me to analyze all of our operations from real estate, trucking, construction, payment processing and social media marketing.
Controlling these areas allowed me to keep the pricing competitive while extending warranties and service to benefit my franchisees and our members.
it’s challenging to take responsibility for everything that happens in your life. It’s difficult to stand up to your critic and say, “you’re right, but you won’t be right for long.” It takes courage to take responsibility for your life and everything in it. it takes courage to admit you have failed and get up to try again.
That is the difference between a hillfaker and a hilltaker. A hillfaker has no control over their future; hillfakers have plenty of excuses and perfectly logical reasons why they can’t accomplish their dreams. A hilltaker has all of the same excuses, but they use none of them. They accept the good with the bad. Hilltakers wake up and understand they are in control and they are 100% responsible for how they choose to show up in their life.
At the end of the day, I don’t think anyone wakes up intending to fail. The most critical part of winning at anything is believing in yourself. That’s where it starts, and that has to be the non-negotiable or cornerstone as to who we are and what defines us. As long as we never stop believing in ourselves, we can tun each failure into a milestone on our journey towards success.