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A reoccurring theme I discuss here is the future and the fact that it is unknowable. That can be exhilarating and frightening all at the same time. These conflicting emotions speak to the two conflicting needs that all humans have – certainty and uncertainty. Your behavior will line up with whichever one of these needs you feel more strongly towards. But regardless of which side you favor, I want you to think about giving you and your business the best opportunity to succeed.
Running a successful small business requires managing the uncertainty. That is why we use the “heads I win tails I don’t lose” philosophy. Managing the risk that is associated with trying new things is an important factor in building your business. Of course you always want to win, but I think not losing is actually more important. It lets you take another turn.
Identify the risks
The point of identifying the risks isn’t to talk yourself out of moving forward, but rather to find ways to remove or mitigate the risk. The better you are at seeing all the ways that things can go wrong, the better your ability to deal with them. But don’t stop with identifying the risk, you need to come up with a strategy for solving the challenge. This can help you in several ways. First, you will have a game plan if things go wrong. But more importantly, even if something goes wrong that you didn’t imagine, you have built your confidence for dealing with the challenges. The worst thing you can do is put your head in the sand and bet on the fact that something won’t happen.
Get creative.
Creativity is a muscle that needs to be exercised. Business is part science with one big part art. Especially, when you are speaking of the future, it is primarily art. How you bring together the elements that make the operations run is art. There isn’t a formula that can be applied that will guarantee success. Franchises try to make the business as much of a formula as they can but even then, there will be some that succeed more than others depending on how the formula is applied.
You own more than just a pile of assets. It is the art of bringing together the assets, employees, and customers that creates the business. The most important part to you is bringing it together in such a way that you create value for everyone. That means a solid return on your invested assets, the ability to pay employees for the value they bring to the business and customers who are happy to pay. Value, value, value for the assets, the employees and the customers.
Bringing it all together is a guessing game of what the future holds as well as what value means to each party. Value is a very subjective thing. It is a bit like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder. You have to figure out what is it worth to YOU. Everybody has their own yardstick. But that is why it works.
That is the foundation of the economy. Trading goods and services; value for value. It needs to be a win for both sides. But when the future isn’t knowable, you need to look at best case scenarios and worst case scenarios. Best case – you win. Worst case – you don’t lose and you get to play again.
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