Читать книгу No B.S. Business Success In The New Economy - Dan S Kennedy - Страница 18

One of the things that frightens many people and their loved ones about choosing the entrepreneurial lifestyle is the risk. It’s interesting that our society chooses the cautious “be careful” as a means of saying goodbye to a friend. We don’t say “be successful” or “be happy,” we say, “be careful.”

The true entrepreneur prefers to be adventurous and “fail forward” all the time. Running a business is a risk, but it needn’t be foolhardy. I rarely make a decision without considering everything from the best-case scenario to the worst-case scenario. I try to expect the best and insure against the worst.

Most people see things as black or white: someone is either the meek and mild Clark Kent or the strong and daring Superman. They try to see themselves instantly turning from Kent to Superman and have understandable difficulty conceiving and believing in such a miraculous transition.

Such dramatic overnight makeovers rarely occur. People grow into and with their new roles. You can start from where you are and grow to where you want to be. Anxiety about the risks inherent in business is natural. But the real objective of the entrepreneur is to manage risk, not to take risk.

Everybody manages risk every day. For example, statistics indicate that the risk of having a home fire during a lifetime is very high. Some people sensibly manage this risk by installing smoke and heat detectors, checking the batteries periodically, keeping an escape ladder in the hall closet, devising and rehearsing an escape plan with the kids, having surge protectors for major appliances, and so on. This is thorough risk management.

Other people just install a smoke detector and forget about it. They are managing the risk to a lesser degree.

Still others do nothing at all. They take the risk.

The successful entrepreneur deals with carefully calculated, measured risk. He demands accurate, complete information from associates and advisers and welcomes input and ideas from credible sources. But he also knows when to stop and avoid the paralysis of never-ending analysis.

There’s a balance between two little and too much caution. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s book The Hobbit, the wizard Gandalf offers Bilbo Baggins an opportunity to go on a great adventure with the potential of acquiring great riches at the end. Bilbo responds with his perspective on adventures: “Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner.”

Somewhere between the extremes of unbridled risk and Bilbo’s total aversion to adventure you will find your balance as an entrepreneur. As you gradually develop that sense of balance as a risk manager and decision maker, you’ll find that you can function without much stress or anxiety.

As an aside, let me give you an important observation about how entrepreneurs get into trouble more often than not: failing to gather readily available information before making decisions and commitments. As a consultant, I can usually stump most clients with just three questions about the history of their planned business ventures. Very few people bother to do any homework. They merely have an idea and act on it, like a child grabbing candy from a grocery store shelf on impulse.

I’m unceasingly amazed at the people who start businesses without even studying the history of the industry they’ve chosen to enter. Far too many entrepreneurs fritter away far too much time needlessly inventing and experimenting when they could be implementing, because they don’t know much about anything that happened before yesterday!

Information gathering is a very important task for the entrepreneur. I realize it sounds dull, feels slow, but nevertheless, the quality of information you amass and consider will have a great deal of impact on the outcome of your decisions. At www.NoBSBooks.com/free, I’ve posted A Guide to Research Sources for Entrepreneurs, which you can download free of charge. It’s on the internet so we can periodically update it.