How to Avoid Making the Same Mistakes Twice | Dick Smith’s Advice

Good morning, Believe Nation! Today's message is "Don't Repeat Your Mistakes." Over to you, Dick Smith.

I made every mistake you could ever make, but the interesting thing was that I'd never make the mistake twice. I remember every mistake. When I opened the first Dick Smith's shop, after 10 minutes no customers came, so I jumped into the car and drove along Military Road at Mosman on the north side to try and drum up some business from the car trade business, 'cause I sold car radios. And when I got back to my little premises, I had one employee and he said, "Dick, I've just sold an L3 lockdown car aerial," and he'd sold it for $5. And he said, "We've made $1.50." And I said, "No, we've lost $1.50." because I hadn't price marked it. That second, I went out and I got little tags and I put a price mark on everything you could fit a price on. And from that day on, it was well known as Dick Smith Electronics got to 50 shops, 50 million turnover, that you would get the sack if you were near a product that didn't have a price marker on it. And I'm rather proud of that because that was an early mistake that could have cost me $1.50. It's all of these things that you learn from.

I really love this message, but I want to take it a little bit deeper for you guys with two thoughts. My first is that a lot of times you don't know what the real mistake is. If it's an obvious mistake, then that's easy to fix. You say, well, I'm never going to do that next time. But sometimes you don't really know what the right mistake is and how to take corrective action. So as an example, maybe you decide I'm going to grow my team and I'm going to hire somebody to help me out, and then that person doesn't work out. Well, the mistake might be your hiring process sucked, or you weren't a great manager, or, you know, the next time you need to do better screening, or you need to do a trial project first before you work with them again. But you might internalize them and say, I can't work with anybody. I'm going to be a lone wolf for the rest of my life. Right? And that doesn't help you accomplish the mission that you're on. Doesn't help you accomplish the dream business that you want to build and have the impact that you want to have. And so When you make a mistake, it's how do you know what the mistake is and then what the corrective action should be? Sometimes it's really obvious, other times it might need a little bit more thinking, 'cause there's so many entrepreneurs who then do the wrong thing after making a mistake. The second thing is then having an awareness too of the mistakes that you make subconsciously. And I think because of limiting beliefs that you've grown up with and that you tell yourself, that hold you back in your business. You're making tons of mistakes every day and you don't even realize it, right? If it's something obvious and it's something that you can fix, but there's a lot of mistakes you're making without even knowing it because you have a broken mindset. I remember one that I've talked about on the channel when I was younger was I always felt like I was too young to be able to sell software to people who were 3 times my age and had PhDs. And I'm not a scientist. I'm trying to sell scientific software. The mistake wasn't in not calling, it was not believing in myself enough, right? And thinking that I was too young. And it just— I never caught it until much later because it was just so subconscious that I kept making these mistakes over and over and over and over again. I never caught it, so I never improved and never got better. And it took a while before I did eventually pick up on it. And so it's having the awareness that you're making the mistake as well. And that can be where, one, having people around you to help point out mistakes can help. For me, what I find super helpful is modeling success and looking up to big entrepreneurs and musicians and actors and innovators and politicians who've done their part to change the world and seeing how they act and looking at that to think of, well, how can I learn from them? And what am I doing that is not quite at that level yet? And every time I do that, I find some kind of limiting belief that I have that as soon as you get awareness of it, that's the first step to solving the problem. And so yes, you never want to try to make the same mistake twice, but just make sure you take the right action after making that mistake and then try to tap into your subconscious to figure out the mindsets and limiting beliefs that are holding you in place so that you can make corrective action and build the business of your dreams. So the question of the day today is I want to know what mistakes you are making on an ongoing basis. Leave it in the comments below. I'm going to join in the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. I wake up every morning with espresso. Keep me going.