Improving your mistakes to grow lucrative business

If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you’ve got at least one nightmare story to tell.

To reach business success, most of us have overcome tough situations and recovered from some very bad decisions.

Hoping that other women might learn from them, two women who built multimillion-dollar businesses offer their advice on how to get past mistakes and move forward.

Denise Haney of Phoenix: Denise founded Newport Furnishings in 1998 with the goal of redefining the way homeowners buy furniture.

She wanted to provide upscale gallery furniture in an affordable way by selling it through a warehouse showroom. And she’s done amazingly well.

But Newport’s growth didn’t happen by accident. And it didn’t happen without error.

Haney winces when she thinks of the major mistake that almost upended Newport during its second year of business.

Up to that point she had focused all her energy on the Phoenix showroom, not even considering additional locations.

Out of the blue, she was approached about expanding into another city, and she let her enthusiasm—and the vision of dollar signs—lead her into a bad decision.

Excited about the opportunity to earn additional revenue with minimal effort, Denise and her husband, Chuck, quickly developed a licensed dealership agreement that enabled the new location to use the Newport Furnishings name and run the business independently in return for a percentage of sales.

But a few months into the deal, Haney began to hear tales from vendors that this location was trying to shortcut the relationship by going directly to the vendors behind her back.

Gravely worried, Haney realised she had placed too much trust in the licensee.

Although Haney was seriously concerned from a business perspective, it took an even greater psychological toll on her.

She was taken aback that someone she had trusted and planned to work with for many years had taken advantage of her. She vowed never to let such a thing happen again.

And she’s held to that vow. As a result of her experience, Denise responded two ways.