Coldwell Banker Commercial Benchmark

Success: Is It Determination or Luck?

Kathy Bissell

A gentleman with an envelope company, Harvey Mackay, has published books and given numerous speeches on becoming successful in business.  Usually his columns remind me of people I have had the good fortune to meet, whether in businesses or athletics, and what I have seen as the common denominator for success.   While some stories have a few surprises, if you collect them over the years, trends emerge.

Jack Bates, the founder of Stanley Steemer, had a vision that he wanted to clean wall-to-wall carpeting in people’s homes.  The thing is that when he had that vision, almost no one had wall-to-wall carpeting.  He didn’t let that stop him.  He started cleaning carpets of those who did have it and slowly grew his following, starting in an east side suburb of Columbus, Ohio. 

Eventually time and style caught up with Bates, and wall-to-wall carpeting became quite the rage.  Everyone had it, but because you couldn’t roll it up and take it to a carpet cleaner, Bates’ idea of in-home cleaning and the taste of the generation merged.  His time had come. 

 
Bates didn’t just clean carpets, he developed all the machinery to do it.  “This machine will suck the blood out of your arm,” he once said to me, to indicate the power of the vacuum.  I didn’t want a demonstration.  
 
Every time something seems difficult, I think of Jack Bates.   
 
The late John McConnell, founder of Worthington Industries, had an entrepreneural story that is not unlike Bates’ saga.  McConnell was a steel salesman.  He saw a need for specialty steel, but he needed a way to get started and lacked money to do it.  Finally he made his first deal by getting a loan against his car, an Oldsmobile, to pay for an order of steel which he then sold.  Three years later, he founded Worthington Industries.  In March of 2012, the company reported sales of more than $600 million.
 
Another kind of success story is Jose Maria Olazabal, European Ryder Cup captain for 2012. Olazabal has rheumatoid arthritis, developed in the mid 1990s, and in the past it has been so bad he could only get from one place in his house to the other by crawling.  However, Olazabal found a way to continue to play and won two tournaments on the PGA Tour and five on the European Tour after most expected he would never play again.

Olazabal has long been known for his short game.  Some think all the Spaniards get that skill like we get small pox vaccinations, or that they are just born with it. 

One day, needing to ask Jose Maria five questions, I waited while he hit the better part of five bags of chip shots at the practice range at TPC Sawgrass.  He hit the same shot, a bump and run of about 20-25 feet, over and over and over again. When he had hit enough of them to satisfy himself, he stopped.  I commented that I finally knew why he had such a great short game. He said “ Ees no secret. Ees practice.”  And he smiled.   

While some see success as luck, I have come to understand it is as much about determination as anything.  Whether it’s a chip shot or creating a new product or service, it’s important to be like Olazabal, McConnell and Bates.  Just don’t give up on what it is you are trying to do.  And practice doesn't hurt either.