Is Your Business Path A One Way Road?

Success Is More About Learning How To Travel On More Than One Road

It takes a lot of courage to invest your life savings on a small business.  Tons of people do.  Building a small business is very risky stuff.  Building a small business not only consumes your money, it can devour your heart, your time and your family relationships.  Tons of people know that truth, too.  A small business can also consume your 'free spirit' and 'appreciation' for others.  Oh, it certainly does very well at that.  It slowly eats up these extensions of the soul.  The longer you work in your small business the more bitter you can grow to become.  Building a small business can become some of the most thankless work you will ever do.  Try one out and discover it for yourself.  You do not need to take my word for it.  Just go see for yourself.  It can be a tall mountain to climb.

For those who have never thrown their own wallet on the table by trying to build a small business, skip trying to understand these perspectives.  The perspectives in that first paragraph describe some realities that come home to many small business owners.  It would be an empty try for any employee to pretend to understand what a small business owner endures.  Only those who have felt these realities can understand and agree to what those words really mean in that first paragraph.  It is only information that small business owners may completely understand.  They 'get it' without much fanfare.

Building a small business can become some of the most trying stuff anyone could undertake.  It is not the work designed for a faint heart.  It most likely will take someone with a hardened soul to weather the challenges that come from the common bumps and bruises a small business produces.  Not many of those souls can remain positive about facing the mountain of challenges they manage each and every day.  Building a small business is very trying stuff.

What's more, when the going gets rough very few business owners will openly admit it.  They become masters at deception about how well they are not doing.  This is one of those silent protective coatings a small business owner develops to help them mentally survive the ugly stuff that comes with owning your own.  It is very common but extremely hard to detect.  Most small business owners become masters of deception when it comes to admitting they are not doing well.  They know all of the best tricks for sweeping ugly stuff under the rug.  It is what becomes a self-taught business owners most genius practices.  They get good at projecting a pretty picture.  They work silently on the art of giving off a good business odor.

This kind of activity grows with time.  It usually begins small and grows up as the business builds a larger head of steam over time.  A growing business brings with it some new requirements that offer challenges that a self-taught owner has never seen before.  More things sell, more stuff is purchased and more people are hired when the business spends time growing up and doing more.  This is very normal stuff.  The demand for practicing better business skills also grows.  With business growth comes an increased demand for learning the art of managing increased human resources that are required to assist the growth of the business.  These new efforts bring on their own set of challenging ways.  They come commensurate with the size of the business growth.  Larger business growth brings with it larger staffs, larger sourcing relationships and larger circles of needed influence.  All of these new relationships place increased pressure onto the miniature world of small business.  They command a good deal of the owners time.  They force that new business owner into learning more about doing stuff they have never done before.  The need to learn how to use this time efficiently becomes very slippery.  Most self taught business owners fall flat on their face with this terrible requirement.  They do not always know what they should or should not be doing.  It becomes a slippery slope of new beginnings that bring with it some long and disguised requirements that offer some efforts that risk delivering a long list of slippery losses.  This becomes what is known as the school of hard knocks.

The skills that are required to assist a growing business become complicated and shifty to understand.  Many self-taught owners find themselves struggling with performing the proper requirements these new and growing challenges bring to the daily grind.  They need help but avoid admitting it.  As a result, they try to tackle much of these new responsibilities with their lessons learned from the school of hard knocks.  As we all know, this is one of the most expensive schools any business owner can enroll to participate.  It brings with it some great lessons but most of them come with a huge cost.  Every small business owner gets to face this reality sooner or later.  It also becomes the great test that many do not pass.  Their results fall short of where they thought their business should be.

In time, after a long series of these kinds of tests and events the small self-taught business owner often times develops a bit of a hardened soul.  They become more cynical.  They feel less successful.  Their checkbooks are always stressed out.  Their human resources are usually more challenging to manage than they ever expected.  The public respect for what kinds of things they are going through seem almost crass.  They feel they are being treated wrongly, maybe even slighted a little bit.  Their zip, desire and creative energy is all used up.  It seems as though they struggle to find the spirit to go to work each and every day.  Bitterness has set in but they remain steadfast in their efforts to sweep all of this ugly junk right under the rug.  They have grown to believe that this is what it takes to operate a small business.  It slowly becomes a one way road.  The small, experienced business owner becomes their own worst enemy.  They walk down this one way road, all alone.

Page two.

Success Is More About Learning How To Travel On More Than One Road

When bitterness sets in the small business becomes hard to manage.  It develops this air of irresponsibility.  It learns how to fudge away from doing what is truly required to be done.  It lies to itself.  It learns the masterful art of sweeping important stuff under the rug.  It remains this way until it finally fails, if it ever does so.  Many small business failures can operate forever under water, financially.  Millions are successfully doing this painful walk right now.  They remain behind on their obligations and can practice this kind of MO seemingly forever.  It has arrested millions of small business owners.  They seem able to manage pain and debt on a perpetual path that seems to lead to nowhere.

When a small business grows up to become this kind of operation they not only grow bitter in design but they also operate on a one way road.  Their business path has become a one way road.

Some businesses get behind on their bills.  Expense obligations grow outside of their ability to satisfy them on a timely basis.  The owners know this challenge well and have learned the art of rolling debt.  It becomes a cushion of working capital they uncomfortably use.  This is exactly how a small, self-taught, under-capitalized small business owner learns how to do what they believe helps them to win.  It is very common territory.

For example.  One of these small business operators owes my neighbor a small amount of money.  That business got behind on their obligations enough to stretch out its payment obligations well beyond what was customary to do.  In fact, my neighbor has made thirty five short trips to that small business to collect little portions of that obligation, here and there.  In the past five months, thirty five trips!  Even after that effort of collections, my neighbor still has not been able to collect all of the funds owed to him.  The small business owner he is dealing with has built story after story to explain away the delays in payment he is producing.  This is a place where many small business owners grow to live.  They hate it as much as we dislike hearing about it.  Stuff goes haywire.  Junk builds up.  Emotions catch on fire.  It becomes an ugly scene to witness.

In this case, the original amount due was nearly $2,000.  The debt has been persistently reduced to $200.  One hundred percent of the effort to satisfy that debt has come from the creditor!  My neighbor, the creditor, has made thirty five trips to try and collect this overdue obligation.  He has been polite, patient and certainly persistent.  The owner of this business owing this debt has made several negative comments to me about this process of collection.  That business owner does not know this guy is my neighbor.  I hear how he views this process.  He says some very negative things about my neighbor, not knowing it is my neighbor.  It is an amazing thing to witness.  This is exactly how a small, self-taught business owner gets into more trouble with their business affairs.  They tend to place blame for their misfortune onto others who had nothing to do with the decisions they made in getting there.  It is odd but normal.  Their path becomes a one way road.

Here's the deal.  When your business drifts away from doing well, go find a mirror.  Start spending more time on looking yourself in the eye and allow your ego to know that not everything your business should be doing is clear to your sight for doing.  See how your path can become a terrible one way road.  Try to see how many times others offer extra effort, extra energy and extra patience to your failing ways as they work to help you figure it out.  This example shows how easy it becomes for an owner to see rough things in only one way.  It clearly exposes how the path can become a one way road.

You see, the neighbor who is making these thirty five trips to collect this debt is spending his own fuel, his own time, and his own patience in trying to resolve that debt.  Unfortunately, this business owner sees these investments as only a source of irritation.  He does not see them as a two way road.  He gives no thanks to the patient neighbor who is trying to help out.  He offers no restitution for the added expenses this event has delivered to the neighbors over-run fuel and time budgets.  The one way road has helped this business owner to become more blind to the simple laws of compensation.  As a result, no great rewards will ever appear.  The business owner has lost sight of this simple law.  His business efforts will never be able to recover well without knowing these truths.  His path has become a one way road.

Get help.  Your business does not need to suffer anymore.  Your leadership and rewards can improve.  Your business developments can get back onto the path of two way success.  There is hope and help.  Be willing to address these two items properly.

Until next time...