PSIJanuary2018

Persist or desist!
This month Jim Rathbone looks at
the need for persistence if you want
to be a leader in business. Failure
is not the end...
recently came across the story of a
Iremarkable man. He first went into business,
but his venture flopped. He switched to
politics, but his first year also flopped. He tried
his hand at business for a second time, but
failed again. That meant three failures in a row -
in three years.
He proposed to his fiancée after four years of
courtship, but she turned him down. Another
woman he was courting died some time later.
These pressures led to a nervous breakdown
and two years of convalescence, after which he
relaunched his political career with a bid to be
elected Speaker to the House of
Representatives. Once again he failed.
Two years later he was again defeated for the
position of Elector. Another three years after
this, he was defeated for a seat in Congress. He
left it for five years before he sought office
again, to be defeated again. Tragically his four
year old son died at around this time.
Seven years in the wilderness followed
before he ran for the Senate, to no avail. Three
years later he tried again for a seat in the
Senate, and failed again. Finally, two years later
and after twenty four years of dogged
persistence, Abraham Lincoln was elected as
the sixteenth President of the United States of
America.
Really successful leaders do not let setbacks
send them into irreversible downward spirals.
They learn from their mistakes and they persist
until they succeed.
• Thomas Edison once said, “I have not
failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t
work.” It is a good job that Edison did not give
up after 9,999 attempts; otherwise I might be
producing this content in candlelight and with
pen and paper.
• Henry Ford only succeeded after producing
overpriced, low-quality cars that were failures.
Learning from these led him to develop the
highly successful and groundbreaking Model T
in 1908.
• Walt Disney set out initially to be a
newspaper cartoonist. No one would hire him.
He then started a commercial art studio
followed by an animation company, both of
which went into liquidation. Disney moved and
started afresh in Los Angeles, only to fail again,
this time losing his most popular character,
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, to a competitor.
Disney gave it another try, creating a mouse
called Mortimer - who his wife, Lillian, renamed
Mickey. The rest is history.
How are you handling the setbacks
that inevitably come your way?
Having the right mindset is critical
to success in business
How are you handling the setbacks that
inevitably come your way? Having the right
mindset is critical to success in business. How
are you approaching 2018?
If you have had a challenging last 12 months,
how determined are you to find pathways to
succeed and achieve your business and
personal goals going forward?
You have two choices: persist or desist!
Jim Rathbone is the Managing Director of
Rathbone Results. Contact him at
jim@rathboneresults.com
www.psimagazine.co.uk
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