The Bronco’s win the Superbowl!

And there you have it – all the hard work the team put in has resulted in the ultimate football success.

Watching the game as a Bronco enthusiast it looks easy, right? However, there was a lot more team preparation than we will ever know. Even though The Carolina Panthers prepared much the same as the Broncos, Cam Newton and The Panthers, ended up in a completely different place than Peyton Manning and the Broncos.

“There’s no question swallowing a Super Bowl loss is incredibly difficult. Having to bare that pain in front of the world cannot be easy. But [Cam] Newton knows enough to understand that life doesn’t always break your way, no matter how diligent your preparation, how intense your desire. Sometimes you just lose. And it hurts like hell.” The Sporting News, February 8, 2016

Just like sports teams we, as business owners, have high aspirations. We spend a lot of time preparing and countless hours working to serve our clients. Most of the time our efforts are never seen by the world or by our clients, and we may not even notice how many hours we spend preparing to be successful. Even with great preparation, many times we fall short of our goal. And it hurts like hell.

What can we do to prepare and reduce failure?

• Define our goal. What does success look like?
• Create a plan to achieve our goals with milestone dates.
• Measure our progress against the plan so we know what we still need to do.
• Adjust our plan. It is normal to periodically not get what we want and to have to change our plan. Sometimes we may not achieve our goal the first time. Don’t give up, adjust and continue our forward movement.
• When we arrive and are successful, celebrate!

Last week I watched Angela Cody-Rouget, the owner of Major Mom on Shark Tank. She went in front of the world in hopes of having a Shark invest in her company. She did a great job preparing to speak to the nation’s top business investors. Unfortunately, she did not win over a Shark. She continues to move forward and is adjusting her plan to meet her goal. I would call that success.

I sat there, even though I had nothing to do with her success, feeling proud of what she had accomplished.