Success through Failure for HVAC Independent Contractors

The obvious attributes of a successful person are qualities such as strong motivation, a positive attitude, an appreciation for hard work, and the ability to lead.  But what about failure? Where does that fit into the formula for success? In this short audio clip, Peter Guber, a successful American film producer and executive as well as an owner of two professional sport teams, explains an odd story that has stuck with him since childhood. Listen as he explains how this story taught him a great lesson about success:

There are so many great lessons that can be gleaned from this audio clip by Peter Guber.  But in today’s blog, we are going to pick apart some of the most important lessons and see how they relate to building success in the HVAC, plumbing, electrical independent contracting world:

• Motivation to reach success must ultimately come from within an individual.
  While we can glean inspiration and motivational tips from others, we will not fully succeed in anything that we do in life if we don’t have the fire of motivation deep inside our hearts that keeps us fighting to reach our goals.  As every HVAC, plumbing, electrical independent contractor knows, it takes hard work to grow a successful service company and perseverance to build a strong company team but the motivation to keep working towards success and excellence must ultimately come from within.  In order to do any job, task, or responsibility well an individual must see the importance of their role in that process.  Leaders, mentors, and encouragers can externally motivate but they can’t be used as “crutches.” If we use them as our continually “safety net” then we handicap ourselves when we reach new challenges alone because we will always expect to have someone holding our hand rather than pushing through to success by our own internal motivation.  Just like the little boy in Guber’s story, he had a father that acted as a mentor and encourager but the father refused to become his son’s sole source of motivation.  Instead he realized that if his son truly wanted to learn to ride a bike then he would keep working towards the goal due to his own internal motivation.
• While mentorship is important for growth, at times, we must understand where we make our own mistakes then make adjustments for our new course based on what we’ve learned.
  Another vital aspect of success is learning how to adjust our own course of action through honing in on where we make mistakes and then gaining understanding as to how we can change.  At first, we may need our mentors and leaders to help us see the mistakes that we make but once we gain a greater understanding of the process that leads to our goal we can begin to adjust our own course.  We do not learn and succeed by repeating our mistakes over and over again but instead we see that what we’ve done results in failure so we must tweak and fine-tune our skills and process, then keep working towards our ultimate goal.  Every time the little boy in this story fell, he knew that he had made a mistake.  But the important thing is that he continually got back up and tried a new course of action such as; adjusting his center of balance or pedaling at a steadier pace.  However, each time he failed and learned something valuable from that failure, he came closer and closer to success—but the ultimate key was always getting back on the bike.
• Success is sweetest when we overcome our own failures because we choose for ourselves to never stop trying.
  This last point is the culmination of both of the points from above.  When we are self-motivated and when we learn how to chart and correct our own course of action then we can work to gain sweet success and accomplish our goals.  Real success can come when we continually choose to never stop pursing our goals.  In the audio clip from above, the little boy’s hard work and perseverance finally pays off and he succeeds at riding his bike down the block. When he succeeds because of his own persistence and motivation, he has the pleasure of being able to look back at his father for support and acknowledgement.  When we purposefully choose, on our own, to get up when we fall down then we can know that when we finally attain our goal it has been accomplished through our own ambition—what sweet success!
  
  Success encompasses many great skills but one is the motivation to never give up and press on even through failure.  In today’s blog we explored three important areas of working towards success even in the midst of setbacks: growing self-motivation, learning how to adjust our own course of action, and learning to overcome our own failures in order to achieve sweet success.  Here at S.E.T., we love walking with company owners, managers, technicians, dispatchers, and CSRs through every stage of their journey to success in the independent contracting world.  Thank you for following our weekly blog.  Here at Service Excellence Training, we love turning your learning into earning!

-Resource curated by Whitney Stewart of Service Excellence Training.