When Fields opened up her very first store, she was excited. She had finally created a solid business plan and found a banker that believed in her. On the store’s first day of business, Fields’ husband questioned her about her long-term financial objectives, but Fields was so excited to finally be in business, she dismissed him. “Oh my gosh, Randy,” she told him. “You know, I’ve got an annual goal. I’ve got monthly plans. But today I just want to get started. I just want to open up the store.”
Fields’ husband bet her that she would not even be able to bring in $50 worth of sales on that first day. And so, achieving $50 in sales became her new goal. But getting to that point was not as easy as Fields has assumed.
“I open up the store. I’ve got all these cookies. I had brownies. And I wait for the most amazing cookies sales,” says Fields. “I just know it’s going to be a smashing success. And here I am waiting, waiting, and the day’s starting to wear, and it’s getting closer to mid afternoon, and I had a couple of customers walk in to see what was going on, but nobody actually made a purchase.”
Fields began to worry about what she had gotten herself into. Not only did she owe a banker a loan with 21 percent interest on it, but in the face of no sales, she also had to accept the shame of proving her husband right. “I thought everything I had worked for, everything I had dreamed of, everything I had thought was possible wasn’t happening,” says Fields. “It was pretty hard.” But Fields was not ready to throw in the towel just yet.
Fields knew that if she continued to stand there doing nothing, she would most certainly fail. It was up to her in that very moment to decide the fate of her and her business’ future. “I’m not going to close the book on history and say, “If only…,” she told herself. “I’m going to do whatever I have to to make this thing work.”
With that, Fields put cookies on a cookie sheet and left the store to wander the neighbourhood handing out free samples. “I was a woman with a mission,” she says. “I would stop people, even buses I would stop and say, ‘Here, you’ve got to taste these cookies. Just try them.’” To her surprise, people began to follow her back to the store to buy more. At the end of the day, with a happy $75 in sales, Fields could stand proudly in front of her husband and say she had won the bet.
Fields had taken advantage of the moment and acted, refusing to live a life of regret. “To me, failure is only a way of communicating that it is not working,” she says. “Stop what you’re doing and try something else until it works.”
Lesson #5: Stop Doing What is Not Working
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