In Business, There Is Always Something New To Work On

Just pick up CNN Money/Fortune Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek or any other publication related to business and you will find a constant barrage of suggestions and recommendations offered to the worlds business leaders.  Daily issues and challenges are everywhere.  There is no end in sight of things to write about.  The world of business has become very complicated, indeed.

I rubbed elbows yesterday with a small business owner.  It was Thanksgiving and we were attending a small dinner of celebration.  He had some interesting insights about the current state of small business affairs.  His view of the current challenges faced by small business was simple, direct and very determined.  I do not believe anyone could have entered that room and changed his mind about his views.  They were as dried in his mind as concrete is on a sidewalk.  Solid.

As determined as his perspectives were delivered, I still suspect he does not believe them as much as he was willing to deliver and protect them.  If you know what I mean?  I think he was more 'wanting' to have his views be correct than was his interest in admitting his uncertainty about what to do next.  Sometimes we say what we do not mean.  I am guilty of that error from time to time.  I know many times in my life others have left my side saying in their minds, "Did he hear what he just said?"

Business owners know one thing is for sure, the future of 'comfortable profits' is traveling around some very risky territories.  No simple profit patterns of steadfast solutions are waiting to be performed.  The work to produce consistent profits has become one of the most elusive elements business owners can truthfully count on.  Troubled balance sheets are easy to produce.  Terrible income statements seem all too ready to appear.  Inconsistent consumers and tricky competition have become too frequent along the trail of business travels.  Profits have become extremely elusive and short lived when they appear.  It is not easy.

My son-in-law recently asked me, do you ever run out of enough relevant business subjects to talk about?  My quick answer was, "No."

In business, there is always something to work on.  There is no end to the challenges business owners face.  There is no business model that once it reaches its final design, it is done doing what it needs to do...all that remains is to deposit the profits.  As it stands, a lot of things have a huge impact on the outcomes of profit.  Those various things are comfortably filled with layers of twists and turns that will never cease to find new challenges to place smack dab in front of the business mind.  Challenges are everywhere.  Profiteering is an elusive painting of art that is extremely hard to consistently produce.  That canvas is forever changing.  No business mind has been able to escape the troubles that arise to interfere with the simple ideas that produce profits.  There is always something in business to talk about.

Page two.

Later that evening my son-in-law began chatting about some new business observations he was playing with in his mind.  He asked a few questions.  As he wandered through those questions with me, it was obvious he was interested in the ideas surrounding the concepts of marketing.  All of his thought patterns surrounded ideas that had a lot to do with making the business model work better.  None of his thoughts included accounting.  None of his thoughts involved a specific product or service.  Every one of his thoughts involved the ideas of finding better ways to reveal how a small business delivers what it does.  He was centered on marketing.

There are three legs to the stool of business design.  One leg is the bookkeeping, the accounting and the issues of controlling the numbers requirements.  The second leg is the leg that supports what the business leader makes, sells or produces.  The product or service knowledge.  The third leg is the leg that gets those products and services to the customers, the marketing.  In my last blog post, this is the art of getting the cheese and the rats combined together.  Marketing.

I now go back to the conversation the small business owner and I had during that Thanksgiving gathering yesterday.  I do not recall any subjects we discussed that included the ideas about improved marketing.  No such discussion took place.  I do, however, recall all of the thoughts we discussed about marketing when my son-in-law chit chatted with me several hours later.  The small business owner had a void of marketing talks when we met earlier during that Thanksgiving dinner.  Yet later that evening, my son-in-law was consumed about the subjects of marketing.  It was a night and day contrast of discussions.

Are you a small business owner who has forgotten completely how important your marketing work has become to your future profit potential?  My son-in-law is not a business owner, just a consumer.  He was more interested in how the business world could improve its pattern of delivery to the mass of people waiting to be served.  His ideas and questions were deep and relevant.  They were interesting and pure.  They were in many ways, adolescent and untested.  Yet in their simple way, so often times forgotten.  That earlier discussion with the troubled small business owner could have used the words my son-in-law later produced in that evening chat we had together.  Those basic marketing needs that we discussed later could have easily become the very best words that the small business owner needed to hear.  It was a wholly separate level of discussion matters.  Their minds are obviously miles apart.

Are you a small business owner who has forgotten completely how important your marketing work has become to your future profit potential?  If you are, there is always something to work on.

Do not become so set in your ways that you forget how fun and important it is to become a new marketing genius every time you need new growth and revenues.  There is always something to work on.  New ideas are everywhere.  New ways to increase profits are waiting to be found.  New ideas are lurking around every corner of trouble.  New solutions are trying to unfold.  Become less attached to the way things aren't and become more in love with how you can make them begin.  There is always something new to work on.  Learn how to get busy discovering what will work next.  Look for new horizons.  The one you may be protecting just might be all done producing.

Go find what to do next.  Go solve some new problems.  Get rid of the problems you may be protecting.  Go chit chat with your son-in-law.  Listen to what he has to say.  His thoughts may inspire some things of effort that you have forgotten to do.  I know I had a bit of eyebrow lifting of my own.

In business, there is always something to work on.  It ain't over until its over and their ain't nobody that controls it except for you.

There is always something new to work on.

Until next time...