It’s about having a long-term perspective, overcoming obstacles large and small and continually working toward achieving your business goals

Talent is very important for the success of your business in the kitchen and bath remodeling industry. When your company can answer the call to fulfill a homeowner’s vision to create and design their dream kitchen or bathroom, you are doing something big. Really big. This is one of the largest investments people make in their lives, both in terms of money and in their hearts. It may be a project to you, but to your customer, it’s their home. Being able to WOW your customers and prospects with the work you do is the difference between success, survival, or failure. Design talent is the clincher and the difference between securing the project and not securing the project.

However, talent alone will not guarantee the success of your kitchen and bath business. Talent is the creative side — the other side of your business requires professional skills which are operations-oriented. For talented designers, whether you are the business owner or the sales designer, the other business-related skills required for success are likely more challenging to conquer.

Separate from talent, what are some other factors that define a successful business?

However, another major factor that contributes to business success is perseverance. It is not necessarily a skill that can be learned in business school or even be taught by parents, but it is a skill that is developed and perfected. And it is a characteristic within people who are firmly driven to succeed.

When you think of perseverance, other words come to mind:

Persistence • Determination • Grit • Resolve • Drive • Purpose • Tenacity • Dedication • Devotion • Tirelessness • Steadfastness • Doggedness • Diligence • Moxie • Stamina • Spunk

We often hear stories about tremendously successful, wealthy people who are an “overnight success.” Truthfully, however, in most cases, the stories we hear described as instant success, wealth, and fame are often anything but an overnight success. These stories are attractive, and they make great stories, but a successful business requires more. People may be motivated to start a business, believing it is easy to be your own boss and rise to success easily and quickly. Business success requires hard work, knowledge, talent, and perseverance. In fact, perseverance can be the difference-maker.

As this quote points out, success encompasses a lot of hard work, continuous learning, and much sacrifice. Hard work is a bit of a no-brainer. You open your doors for business and you and your team put full effort into the work every day. Where perseverance comes in is with continual effort to improve the business:

• increase profits and productivity
• enlist in ongoing education
• engage with a business coach
• study the market
• work with a mentor
• sacrifice your time to always improve your business
• overcome obstacles

Sometimes perseverance requires you to re-examine yourself, your business, and goals. You may be facing tough times, like the 2008 recession and the once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic. It is easy to give up. It is comfortable to go to work every day, “punch a clock,” so to speak, and collect a guaranteed paycheck from an employer. But perseverance — that spirit inside of you — pushes you to stay on your path to your business and personal goals. Your grit keeps you going to overcome obstacles large and small and work to achieve your goals.

Perseverance is all about never stopping the pursuit of your higher goals and developing the ability to overcome and deal with the obstacles which stand in the way of your goals. The capacity to gracefully manage failure and not let it defeat it — it’s a difficult task. THAT is perseverance!

You may reach the point of asking yourself — why do I keep doing this?

• It took too long and too many meetings to receive a retainer check to start several projects.
• I had to negotiate too low a price in order to win the job.
• With the strong competitors in our market, winning projects is becoming harder and harder each day.
• I wonder if the profit is high enough for the effort that goes into each job.
• We lose too many jobs for the number of appointments we have with prospects, and there must be a way to improve our close rate.

One of the key elements of perseverance is continually learning. Ongoing education is one of the best competitive advantages you can give yourself and it makes persevering through tough times easier. Or at the least, it can help you see a future that is brighter than your past. Education is a way you can learn new tactics to overcome obstacles and deal with challenges more effectively than you ever did before.

Perseverance requires:

• Commitment by you
• Optimism, but be sure it is realistic
• Continued learning
• Goal setting, that is smart and realistic
• Planning
• Action
• Discomfort, going beyond your comfort zone
• Like-minded people in your network who inspire you
• Practice, practice, practice
• Belief in yourself

Angela Duckworth, author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, defines this concept as “sticking with things over the very long term until you master them.”

Check out her TedTalk on the subject.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers, talks about how we should look at success and how to achieve it. He talks about the 10,000 hour rule, which is the number of hours successful people put into practice in order to be good at something. As he so aptly says, “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.”

We have said it before — you and your team already have the talent side of the business handled well. It’s the other side of the business mindset that makes the difference between success and failure. Perseverance is the key to the success of your business.