I just spent a week traveling about chatting with small business owners. Some I know rather well and some I have never met before. I posed several nebulous questions before them. The answers and chit chat they offered was kind of telling. For the most part, all of them are a bit unsure of where their business might be three years from now. Not one of them shared a high degree of confidence in their near future of performance opportunities. Not one.
Just taking the time to read the Wall Street Journal recently, through and through, and the same uncertainty concern seems to hold true for corporations and the world's top companies. Uncertainty is not just a political buzz word lately. It is also becoming a mainstream habit, a part of our business world of reality. Too many business owners and business leaders are pulling in their creative reins at a time when innovation is screaming out loud for more things to do. This is not a very good scene for the world of business. I am certain that the largeness of our looming debt on the balance sheets of countries, corporations and personal home budgets has a good deal to do with the higher levels of uncertainty being expressed. Debt is a heavy weight. It's benefit has already been realized. So all that remains is its requirement to be lowered. Nothing good remains to be enjoyed by that kind of a problem. Debt brings on last years enjoyment at this years expense. How certain is that? Maybe it is not uncertainty that we fear? Something to consider, for sure.
Uncertainty also circles around the fickle nature of the consumer markets. Consumers have come to prove how unreliable their spending habits tend to lean. With the complicated methods technology offers to identify how and where the consumer will release what it offers to spend has become a maize of metrics that read like a complicated, strange jigsaw puzzle. The task of marketing new growth has become a daunting chore. Not to mention, expensive to acquire. This fuels the notions of uncertainty as well.
What is a small business owner to do? How will they fight this overwhelming world of economic plight with the very limited resources they have to tap? No wonder they are expressing higher levels of uncertainty. Be also reminded that this is an election year. The business owners have had to endure some of the most complicated, well-designed, high volume productions of lies and promises that they know their future political leaders will never be able to provide. Uncertainty looms very large right now.
The economic plight of small business in America becomes sandwiched between the breads of these challenges. As a result, innovation appears worn out. Innovation sounds fruitless. Innovation has found its dim light to the end of its promised tunnel of joy. The business world is pulling in its horns for a time of breathing. It is exhausted with this last run for survival. Most small business owners are hanging on with sheer determination and with as much creativity as they can muster to stay alive. That's it. That is where the good ones seem to remain. The not-so-good-ones are folding up shop, selling off assets or re-positioning with the help of shared ownership in order to move forward towards the next days. The economic plight of small business today is learning how to manage its way through the current ocean of waves pounding uncertainty to the shores of their balance books.
The economic plight of small business today is uncertainty.
So what do we do about it?
Page two.
Once a small business begins to curb its risk taking features, as fierce as the competition in this world has become, the move to reduce taking chances becomes a chink in the armor that competitors move around to capture and enjoy. The business plan fails to expand its growth with new ideas leaving the competition room to move in downstairs. This is how small business fails to grow its market shares. The elimination of taking chances helps the competition to edge up frontward. The competition first moves in downstairs then climbs up those same stairs and shares the living room with its owners. That is not a good thing to have happen in this world of uncertainty. Falling behind the competition, or even sharing the market with them, is not part of the right kind of recipe for success. Falling behind the competition will only add strength to the already overwhelming sense of uncertainty. Remain in the hunt for new ideas. Stay active with innovation. Feed stupid thoughts with more creativity.
Uncertainty works in strange ways. It helps the small business owners to reduce their chance-taking ways as they perform less critical decisions. It appears as though reducing the idea for taking chances can become a very good marketing plan. That simply is not true. Uncertainty not only has the ability to interfere with the notion that more risky stuff needs to occur, it can mask itself to believe that slower efforts are more affordable to manage. Not true, again. Less revenues has not always been a healthy part of a good recipe for success. With all of this in mind, uncertainty feeds the reduction of taking calculated risks. As a result, good ideas, new markets, new growth and forward moving energies will not find their way to the strategic top of the cream of success. Uncertainty becomes the underlined problem that infects the small business like a slow moving plague. It kills that business model in a slow and methodical way.
How do we prevent this kind of effect? How does a small business owner, with very limited resources, find a way to push through this kind of fear? How does uncertainty become less certain? How can a small business owner fix that process? How can a small business owner do what the major corporations have not been able to do? How can certainty truly become a reality in this complicated business world? Easy. Do exactly what the scriptures suggest..."Be anxious for nothing." Do not get all worked up about the things we do not know. Instead, get more charged up about learning what those things are and teach yourself how to manage your ideas better. You are small so that effort should not be an astronomical undertaking, like many of the worlds largest companies will face. They are too large to flex their ability to learn this well. That is exactly the best advantage you have right now. You can go learn immediately what it takes to overcome the uncertainty you feel. You can fix that problem in less than one week. They cannot.
My question? What are you waiting for? Are you waiting for them to catch up and lead the way? The heck with them. Go make the necessary changes you need to do. Go find out what truly needs to be changed. Go learn about what your customers desire to see. Go provide them with the things they want to experience. Quit assuming you know what those things are. Go find out. Study it. Learn it. Examine areas of marketing you have never experienced. Try something new. Push yourself into leadership shoes you have never ever worn. Do not tally away from trying on something new. Get busy being busy with the ideas you have always been afraid to try to do. Who knows, there might be some golden events that have been kept hidden all of these years? Go ahead, begin to find ways to learn more about what it is you do. Treat yourself how to move closer to the things you do not understand.
Again, my question? What are you waiting for? Failure to arrive?
Maybe in the next post we will cover the idea of educating ourselves in a more useful manner. I happen to know that the best way to reduce fear is to get more relevant information. With more relevant and useful information, we can overcome the shackles of fear. Once fears are better managed, uncertainty begins its disappearing act. If you have the ability to reduce uncertainty, do it. Get busy finding creative ways to try on new ideas. Study what it takes to make new ideas work more efficiently. Become a master of education. Keep teaching yourself to learn more. Quit running around thinking you are done learning. There is so much more knowledge hanging around that has never been tapped by the brain you own. Kick out some of the cob webs and dust resting near that brain. Get busy reading, studying and discovering. Then convert your studies into new and innovative ways in how you operate the business you lead. Begin the process for removing uncertainty. It sounds like fun to me.
Again, my question? What are you waiting for? Failure?
And for goodness sakes, quit licking your wounds. There is blood on every single trail of success. That is one of those things that is certain to occur. Just ask anyone who has made it! Wow, some certainty!
Until next time...
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