Herman School of Business
Relish Reality
My PR Guru, Brooke Halpin, invited me to lunch near his home in Malibu, California. Driving from the 101 down through the canyon a stark reality hits you. One beautiful home clutching a hillside with a gorgeous view sits a short distance from a burned out shell with the rubble of burned car carcasses still parked in the driveway. Did one family deserve to keep everything they owned intact while some less deserving family lost all in the recent fires?
In business so often reality is the same. Two owners try their best, work their ass off and yet for some unknown reason one shoots to the top and one topples over and goes broke. I have been both guys. Now some things can be controlled by you to help reality land you on the winning side. Yet over half of you will fail.
The discussion over lunch was how do we project the positive side of my message, that failure isn’t fatal, while not dwelling on the gloom and doom side of life and business all the time? Radio hosts want five minutes of upbeat chatter for their audience, not chicken little crying that the sky is falling. Well, the owners who win don’t need my help. But since most owners lose, and I want to lessen the pain and price of failure for them…to the dark side I must go. If you met me you would see a very happy, positive guy who loves his family, his life and his calling to this mission. And I do believe it is a mission that is gaining momentum as we roll along.
I laugh, love my friends, and want others to feel the joy of success that I have felt. But as Norm from Cheers said, “It’s a dog-eat-dog world and I am wearing milk bone underwear.” The cancer doctor saves lives but has to deal with the doom of death for many patients. The cardiologist watches heart attack after heart attack, but joyously smiles when he saves one from a premature ending. The point is this mission calls for dwelling in the muck of failure, of debt and cash management crisis, of mistakes and loss of family fortunes and a broken ego and the depression of knowing you may have lost it all.
Pay attention. People failing don’t die from that. Brooke and I came up with an interesting phrase: you are broke, deep in debt and about to lose it all, and the good news is that you will survive it to feel all the coming pain! You may get divorced, have to downsize, give up your toys, suffer some humiliation, and stop smiling for awhile, but you won’t die. So, you better face reality and even relish it. Because no matter how bad you think it is, there are things you can do to change your position and return to success. And that means if we keep being honest, speak to the cold harsh reality of your situation, and dwell on the positive side of your situation, you will see the need for my hitting you over the head with a sledge hammer from time to time.
- Posted: 7 November 2007
- Comments: 2
- Category: Running a business
Comments
Should you ever worry about how your failures could affect your ability to do business in the future? I know failing forward is a good thing but what if with each failure you close a future potential business deal or is this just too fatalistic?
Herman says: The most dangerous impediment to future business prospects is when you wreck your credit history...there has never been any stigma from future deals for me except the early huge failure that caused a dealy in my ability to use credit on future deals...hence I harp on debt management all the timeWritten by Richard on 7 November 2007
Go ahead and tell us about failure. There is a hell of a lot more to learn from failure than from success.
Most people who fail look back and ask why. I have never seen a success ask why. Obviously it is because they were brilliant or had the perfect strategy. Dumb luck never plays into the story.
Here is a tip. If you made a mistake, tell me how you avoided making it twice.
“There is nothing new in the world other than history you have not read yet.” – Harry Truman, I think?
Written by Doug on 7 November 2007