Over time, regardless of the endeavour pursued, you will experience some degree of failure. The key is how those failings are viewed and acted upon. An element of learning will come from any failure and so it is actually an opportunity to develop and grow if you embrace the right mindset. Put simply: failure results in learning.
Viewing failure in a positive way can make a huge difference in progressing towards a defined goal.
Thomas Edison created 3,000 designs to develop the light bulb over a period of two years. He didn’t view each attempt as a failure but simply, that it took 3,000 steps to create light. It actually took him 10,000 attempts to perfect the light bulb!
Thomas Edison said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Reaching any goal or outcome requires effort. If you want your business to perform and enjoy ‘above average’ results, you need to put in some hard work. Inevitably, there will be some pain and failures along the way – if it was that easy, everyone could do it right?
Being part of a franchise means you are connected to a great, proven system. Some of the inevitable failures and subsequent learnings will have been done and dusted well before your time courtesy of pilot franchisees. Franchises offer a proven model. However, each new territory or trade zone will have its own unique characteristics and you will still need to find out what works when it comes to local marketing, sourcing regional suppliers and picking the best location, even down to the cultural nuances which might dictate which products sell best in your area. It’s not an exact science and so it takes time to figure out what works best.
The difference for the most successful franchisees is that they acknowledge and accept there will be challenges and then learn from them, to ensure future progress towards their goal becomes a smoother journey.
There are two other famous quotes that come to mind:
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again” was a phrase was first used by the educator Thomas H. Palmer is his book: Teacher’s Manual, originally created to encourage children to do their homework!
Winston Churchill also famously said: “Success if not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Perseverance is important, however, only if you learn from your mistakes and revise behaviour in line with those learnings to achieve the desired outcome. Ultimately, this approach will provide the best chance of eventual success whatever your goal.
At Papa John’s we work with franchisees from every walk of life. The most successful are those that are not afraid to embrace mistakes in order to learn and develop their franchised businesses. So, consider all those failures as learning opportunities – think what can I do differently next time in order to succeed?
Good luck!
