Photo: Shutterstock.

Today, I have an extremely sad story for you, which explains why we need to continuously seek to improve. It contains a powerful nugget of essential information, which all of us can benefit from.

I’d like to start with a question: What lessons have you learned from the past year, which you can invest in the year ahead?

This is a topic, which business owners really, REALLY struggle with. They start out in business keen to learn. They read the books. They take notes. They review their decision making, looking for ways to improve.

Then… after a few years they find they’ve become set in their ways. Sure, the occasional harsh lesson hits them just hard enough, to force them to re-evaluate. But they pretty-much go from year to year, getting a year older, but without gathering a year’s worth of experience.

They almost relive a version of the same old year, over and over again.

Here’s why this matters.

A powerful, extremely sad lesson

I recall speaking with 2 business owners last summer. One of them was in her early thirties and had been in business for 6 years. The other was in his sixties and had been in business for decades.

The business owner with the 6 year old business was thriving and hired me in order to help her reach her exciting growth plans. The other business owner was, in his own words, “too broke to retire” and needed help. After speaking with them, the young business owner clearly had 6 solid years of business experience. And the other had maybe 3 years of experience, with him admitting to making the same mistakes year after year, after year…

The guy who should have been extremely experienced, confessed to being “a creature of habit”. He had certain beliefs about business, which he refused to question. Many of which were fatally flawed. Here’s one of the examples I recall. If a prospective client didn’t immediately see the value of his service, he’d take it personally as a rejection, feel hurt and refuse to follow-up. As he approached retirement with just a year’s worth of living expenses to rely on, he was forced to “humble himself” and follow-up prospective clients, who’d failed to reply to his proposals.

He found around a third of them became clients. They just needed questions answered and concerns addressed. He estimates his previous attitude to following-up lost him millions of dollars. And he’s right.

Only after decades of wasted opportunity and an impending financial disaster, did this likeable guy start learning again. He’s making real progress now, but he’s struggling mightily with the knowledge of what he and his family have missed out on, needlessly.

When I speak with entrepreneurs about the importance of gaining experience and learning, I share the following with them.

Imagine a door, which has a combination lock. If you use the correct 10 number combination, the door will open for you. If I use the correct combination it will also open for me. That’s because the door doesn’t care. Press the correct numbers in the right order and you’re in!

Business success is the same. Because success doesn’t care.

You can read the full article here: Success Doesn’t Care.

In business, if you do the right combination of things correctly, you’ll succeed. Conversely, no matter how nice you are, how honest you are, how hard you toil, the wrong combination still can’t work.