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Failing To Succeed

Written by: Zig Ziglar

Article Overview: "You've got to learn to lose in order to win" sounds like strange advice, but the man who says it has earned over three hundred million dollars. Even in today's economy, that's a considerable sum of money. Here's the story.

Failing To Succeed

"You've got to learn to lose in order to win" sounds like strange advice, but the man who says it has earned over three hundred million dollars. Even in today's economy, that's a considerable sum of money. Here's the story.

In 1958, brothers Frank and Dan Carney started a pizza parlor across from their family's grocery store. Their goal was to pay for their college educations. Nineteen years later, Frank Carney sold the 3,100-outlet chain called "Pizza Hut" for three hundred million dollars.

Carney's advice to those starting out in business sounds strange, but he explains the concept this way: "I've been involved in about fifty different business ventures and about fifteen of them were successful. That means I have about a thirty percent success average."

The point Frank makes is this: You need to be "at bat" if you ever expect to get a hit, and it's even more important to step back up to the plate after you strike out.

Carney says Pizza Hut was successful because he learned from his mistakes. For example, when an Oklahoma City expansion effort failed, he realized the importance of location and decor. He learned from his mistake so that the future would be brighter. When sales declined in New York, he came up with the innovative idea of introducing thick crust pizza with substantial success. When regional pizza houses began to take part of the market share, Frank responded by introducing "Chicago-style pizza," and again success came his way. Factually, Carney failed many times, but in each case he made those failures work for him.

Failure is an experience common to all of us. Question: Will you let those failures work for you or against you? If you do as Frank Carney did, you will use your failures as learning experiences and I really will SEE YOU AT THE TOP!

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Article Tags: business ventures, carney, chicago style pizza, college educations, expansion effort, experiences, failure, grocery store, hundred million, market share, million dollars, mistake, nineteen years, oklahoma city, pizza hut, pizza parlor, strange advice, substantial success, sum of money, thick crust pizza



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Re: Books for Business Owners - Hi DougSchadle, Thanks for sharing your favorite business book with us! A good book I'm reading now is "Maximum Achievement: Strategies and Skills That Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed" by Brian Tracy as it was a birthday gift from a friend. Tracy's book is helpful in identifying what's important in your life and then setting an action plan to achieve it.
Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succ - Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succeed Ronna Lichtenberg 2005 From the inside cover: "As a woman, you probably feel uncomfortable when it comes to promoting yourself and asking for what you want." WHAT IN THE HECK IS THIS, I asked myself when I read that. Women are the fastest growing business owners in the US and Canada, there are t housands of women executives and CEOs - though not as many as might be expected, admittedly, yet the book opens with this surely out of date stereotype. However, as she continued to give examples of women who had high paying jobs but were routinely not paid as much as men because it hadn't occurred to them to ask for raises, etc., I decided it was probably true for a majority of businesswomen... Anyway, more of the info from the jacket: "Other books have told you how to get what you want by being more like a guy. Pitch Like A Girl tells you why its an advantage to be who you are and how to do better by bringing more of yourself to work." The TOC: 1. Pink and Blue 2. The Quck-dry Chapter 3. What's In your head that's not in his 4. The Me, Inc Mindset 5. Visioning: Discover What You Really Want 6. Identifying Prospects 7. Pre-pitch homework and heartwork 8. Crafting the pitch 9. Pricing the pitch 10. Packaging the pitch 11. Delivering the pitch 12. Closing Conclusion A Word to the guys The Empathy Quotient The Systemizing Quotient Bibliography And on a side note - non-fiction books without indexes - of which this is one, annoy me.
Why women don't charge more - I just read a chapter in Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succeed, by Ronna Lichtenberg that deals with this. THe chapter is called Pricing the Pitch. "In a WAll Street Journal article about what might be holding women back from corporate success, Terry Dal, a former vice president at Wells Fargo bank, said, "Good girls don't advertise; only prostitutes advertise. We feel dirty promoting ourselves." The author's advice: The first step in getting the money you desserve is to understand the market rate for your offering. Not what you think you need, not what they're willing to pay, but the going rate for similar goods and services offered in your area by someone with your skills and experience. Then, seek expert advice. "Men routinely consult lawyers, financial advisers, exxecutive recruiters and any other paid counselors to help them assess what constitutes a fair fee." Your research into going rates should not lead you to a single price for your pitch but rather a range of prices - both a market range and a personal range, which should overlap but won't necessarily be identical. In pricing, one size does not fit all. The final step in determining your price is to consider what you think you'd be paid for the same job if you were a man. The author also discusses why women usually discount their prices (must'n't appear too over-confident), the difference between discounting and "giving a discount", and other issues. I'd advise every woman wondering about what to charge to read at least this chapter of the book.
Napoleon on Project Management - Why do I include this in a list of books aimed at female entrepreneurs? Well...in the expectation that there are as many female history buffs as male ones, and in the belief that anyone interested in history will find this book fascinating, while those interested in project management will learn a thing or two. I think this was the first "gimmick" book - an author using a historical figure (usually a male, military figure, it must be admitted) to talk about modern day business management. I refuse to read any of the kind that advocates - even obliquely - the techniques of the Sopranos or the Mossad - but these military ones are pretty fun. Anyway: Only in the understanding of history, Napoleon might say, do we gain an understanding of strategy in the present. In the same spirit, Napoleon on Project Management offers the recipe for successfully managing your commitments using the strategies, tactics and priorities that propelled Napoleon himself to victory. [The book doesn't gloss over how Napolean eventually fell in defeat, of course, and there's lessons to be learned there as well. TOC Foreword by Douglas James Allan (Napoleanic Society of America) 1. The Rise to Power -The Skills to Succeed -A Compelling Vision -Diplomacy and Networking -Lessons from the Great Campaigns 2. Napoleon's 6 Winning Principles -Introduction -Exactitude -Speed -Flexibility -Simplicity -Character -Moral Force 3. The Downfall -What Went Wrong -Lessons from the Russian Invasion and Waterloo -The Four Critical Warning Signs -Napoleon's Legacy


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