strategic business growth firm
Linkedin-in
310.519.1947

Bite-Size Chunks of Wisdom

Strategy & Planning

Recent Posts

What Everyone is Saying About the Importance of a Business Strategy

Posted by
Jackie Nagel, Synnovatia

Spontaneity and the ability to “fly by the seat of your pants” or “fake it until you make it” can be excellent qualities to have, but to survive the test of time in business you need a plan. If you’re serious about success, a clear business strategy must underlie all the day-to-day tasks you do.

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory, tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” —Sun Tsu, Ancient Chinese Military strategist

What’s A Business Strategy — and Why Do I Need It?

Occasionally, someone achieves a goal suddenly, or even accidentally, but it’s rare. Attempting to duplicate the success — in the absence of a strategy — is even rarer. Not only does a strategy ensure your success is repeatable, it also simplifies the tough decisions, annoying business details, and unglamorous drudge-work found in any business.

Here’s how strategy supports your success:

  • Business strategy aids prioritization and decision-making. What should you be doing, what should you delegate, and what should you cross off your list entirely? What should you do first? Without a clear strategy, you’ll never know if what you’re doing daily makes sense. You can get off track, and spend time on busy-work tasks that don’t matter, but fill your time. Being strategic about your business ensures you use your time wisely and helps you determine what is most impactful. It also helps when you need to say “no” to requests or opportunities that don’t contribute to achieving (or are not in line with) your main goals.

“What business strategy is all about — what distinguishes it from all other kinds of business planning — is, in a word, competitive advantage. Without competitors there would be no need for strategy, for the sole purpose of strategic planning is to enable the company to gain, as efficiently as possible, a sustainable edge over its competitors.” —Kenichi Ohmae, Japanese guru known for this thinking on strategy

  • Business strategy gives meaning to all your work-day tasks. When tasks have direction and meaning, you’ll have more energy to complete them — or delegate them, as the case may be.

“To be strategic is to concentrate on what is important, on those few objectives that can give us a comparative advantage, on what is important to us rather than others, and to plan and execute the resulting plan with determination and steadfastness.” ―Richard Koch, best-seller author of The 80/20 Principle

  • Business strategy helps you talk about your business. Telling others what you do, especially on the spur of the moment, is much easier when you’ve already defined your vision and mission. Taking the time to work out your strategy — the thing that really sets you apart from your competition — makes your unique value proposition easier to articulate.
  • Business strategy helps you attract investors, business partners, and prospective customers and employees. Without a clear business strategy and vision, it can be hard to get funding for your business’ growth and convince others of its importance and validity. A sound strategy helps ensure your business/project sounds possible and probable to others.
  • Business strategy keeps YOU inspired too, and on the path toward your success. Minus a strategy, it’s easy to fall into chaos and anxiety. Your strategy, coupled with your vision, helps to keep your energy up when it begins to languish. A clear strategy also boosts employee morale while maintaining focus and productivity.

“With the level of uncertainty we see today, more people are asking, how can you develop a strategy in a world that keeps changing so fast? They are afraid that a set of rigid principles will hinder their ability to react quickly. I argue that it is precisely at such times that you need a strategy.” ―Orit Gadiesh, corporate strategist, and chairman of Bain & Company

Frankly, it can be a bit daunting to lay out a business strategy. However, with an inspiring vision, a purposeful mission, and a competitive strategy everything about your business becomes easier and more fulfilling.

“Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point.” ― Henry Mintzberg, internationally renowned author, academic, and researcher

8 Questions to Scrutinize Your Business Strategy (Like a Boss)

Posted by
Jackie Nagel, Synnovatia

Your business strategy is a primary differentiator that is easily visible to your marketplace. Although a client may not readily be able to identify a point of difference between you and your competitor as a business strategy, it is one of the few mechanisms by which buying assessments are made. Given that, it’s important to get your strategy right.

Once you’ve artfully crafted your strategy, how can you tell it’s the one?

This Is A Test!

It’s easy to get attached to our ingenuity — to become enamored with our own brilliance. For your strategy to be successful, however, it’s important to “pass muster,” as they say in the military.

So, put on the hat of your greatest critic and subject your strategy to the deepest criticism with the following analysis.

  1. In what way does your strategy serve your primary client?
  2. How does your business strategy align with your business mission, capabilities, and objectives?
  3. What sustainable competitive advantage does it create?
  4. How does it boost growth in profitability and long-term gain?
  5. How does your business strategy help you capitalize on opportunities within the market?
  6. What critical problems does it solve for your business?
  7. How does it make your competitors uncomfortable? (This is my personal favorite.)
  8. What business assumptions are being ignored in your evaluation?

As with any worthwhile business endeavor, it’s never easy. In fact, some of the most vital aspects of growing our business are also our most challenging. But, in the long run, you’ll be glad you took the time to test your business strategy for effectiveness.

The Most Overworked, Underutilized Business Growth Strategy: Imagination

Posted by
Jackie Nagel, Synnovatia

Albert Einstein wrote, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”

As small business owners we use our imagination in a variety of ways. As we’re launching our budding enterprise, we imagine the freedom of working when we want. We fantasize the financial freedom of business ownership. And, we experience the joy of achieving our goals.

When growing a business becomes more challenging than what we initially fabricated, our imagination conjurs up mental pictures of doom and gloom, destitution, and dejection. Our imagination not only creates impressions within our minds eye, it replicates emotions like fear, failure, and rejection.

Used as a tool, rather than a weapon, imagination ignites passion. It triggers creativity, fuels determination, and creates tenacity. When employed to solve a problem, imagination fabricates possible solutions.

Imagination forms a mental representation of what is not yet in existence — and sets in motion a chain reaction. As a result, we see our business, and it’s growth strategy, in a different light. Where there may have been obstacles, we now see opportuntiies. Problems are replaced with possibilities.

Imagine this

If you’re ready to use your imagination as a tool for your business success, take this exercise out for a spin.

Close your eyes, take 3-4 deep breaths, and imagine this:

My goal is ______(fill in the blank)________.
It feels like _____(fill in the blank)________.
It sounds like _________________.
It looks like _____________________(color and texture).
It felt ____________________________in my body (location).
It feels ___________________________(warm, cold).
Its color is __________________________.
If it had a taste, it would be ____________.
It smells like _________________________.
Its texture is _________________________(smooth, rough, prickly).

Do you see the possibilities? I thought you would.

5 Key Factors in Determining Your Business Strategy for Growth

Posted by
Jackie Nagel, Synnovatia

Today’s small business owners are grappling with uncommon levels of complexity. As one colleague so aptly put it, “We have overwhelmed entrepreneurs coming out of the woodwork from all directions.”

Head-down discipline is no longer effective to accomplish the business growth and success you desire. Just as much as a business strategy informs you of what to work on, an effective strategy also enlightens you on what to avoid.

A Business Strategy For Simplicity and sustainability

Strategies guide your decision-making, save valuable resources, and prevent you from squandering time and money on the wrong projects or pursuing the wrong market. They prevent conflicting priorities and, most importantly, clarify and prioritize your activities.

In essence, they bring a degree of simplicity to your business unachievable by any other means.

What do you need to know when reconstructing your business strategy? Here are the vital components to consider as you reformulate your business strategy.

  1. Elements critical for growth. Based on your stated mission and vision, are you able to pinpoint the influencing factors required to achieve your mission? Elements such as target audience, location, reputation, distribution, pricing, and product uniqueness are just a few things to consider.
  2. Issues affecting your industry. This includes opportunities, threats, and how you might leverage and/or minimize them to achieve your mission and vision.
  3. Channels for distribution. Pinpointing how your target audience currently purchases similar products/services, including how they will likely obtain them in the future will be a key factor in deciding your distribution channels. This, by far, is the most rapid-changing influencer of business strategies in today’s market due to the explosion of technology.
  4. Strengths and weaknesses of your business. Recognizing factors that contributed to your business success, as well as those that have limited business growth, play an important role in crafting business strategies that serve the test of time.
  5. Factors limiting growth or profitability. No one really likes to look at — or admit to — factors that may limit, reduce, or bottleneck business growth yet this is likely one of the most significant reasons for identifying your business strategies.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It can be if you’re willing to set aside the time to take a step back, observe the changing business environment, and thoroughly think through the important aspects of business strategy formation. It’s truly the most important aspect of business development.

10 Ways Your Mind Sabotages Your Business Strategy…And How to Fix It

Posted by
Jackie Nagel, Synnovatia

Your mind is a beautiful thing. It ignites ideas, sparks inspiration, and illuminates direction. One’s mind can also be a bit tragic. It has the power to elevate anxiety, destroy self-confidence, and flame the fire of your worst fears. It shrinks goals, minimizes efforts, and brings to fruition that which one most fears.

It can quickly and easily create a catastrophic event in one’s thinking. It’s almost effortless. Triggered by the smallest calamity, the mind dashes down a rabbit hole to unearth visions of epic ruin.

Rather than rush to a place in the mind where clarity and calm co-exist, the mind resorts to sabotaging behaviors. And, given the primal function of the brain, who could truly blame us for wanting to flee danger?

Subtle sabotage…and its cunning ways

The mind employs slick tactics to convince you that engaging in certain behaviors is necessary — even when those behaviors undermine your goals.

Can you identify with any of these cagey practices?

  1. Procrastination. Although putting things off until later sounds like a good strategy in the moment, it’s merely a tactic used to trip you up.
  2. Obliging self-indulgent behavior. Commonly used phrases like “I deserve it” and “I’ve worked hard” sound completely justifiable — although they’re not. It’s one more way your mind tricks you into avoiding that which you truly want.
  3. Escapism. Whether to a sandy beach, a trashy novel, or under the covers, dodging your business strategy — and beliefs about its success — doesn’t change anything.
  4. Avoidance. Putting off pulling the trigger on your business strategy until later today — or maybe next week — doesn’t change the outcome.
  5. Relentless research. When you know a bunch about many topics, yet have little to show in the form of goals achieved, you know you’ve been sabotaged!
  6. Perpetual planning. This really looks good — but only on paper. It’s another subtle way our minds keep us “busy” rather than achieving.
  7. Crisis fabrication. Chaos creates a smoke screen preventing us from seeing the reality of what is really occurring beneath the surface of our mind.
  8. Perfectionism. A need for something to be exact, as in the case of a website or new program, is merely a delay tactic.
  9. Saying “Yes” too often. If your days are filled with commitments and obligations to others, you don’t have to face down the fears of achieving your own goals.
  10. Continuous complaining. Camouflaging self-sabotaging beliefs in criticism, blame, fault-finding, or dissatisfaction does little to change your business outcomes.

Sublte. Astute. Clever. Creative. Sleek. Inventive. Rationale. Sensible. Skillful. All describe the dark side of one’s mind.

Imagination: Your Business Strategy For Success

You may have come across some readings claiming that thoughts create reality. Thoughts, by themselves, do not change our reality. They do, however, change the choices we make that influence our ability to succeed with our business strategy.

Beliefs, however, play a significant role on our thoughts. Regardless of our subtle — and not so subtle — choices of self-defeating behaviors, the origin is in one’s belief.

I’ve always found that the best defense against self-defeating beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors is a good offense. And, it begins with intentionality.

When emotional upheaval — and subsequent self-sabotaging behaviors — begin to take hold, stop whatever you’re doing. Put your day on pause and take several deep breaths to calm the amygdala that little piece of gray matter that runs our emotional universe.

Next, begin to construct a different mental framework of potential outcomes. Don’t just visualize — imagine! Imagine what it looks like to achieve your goal. Imagine what it feels like to conquer your fears. Imagine your confidence growing as you stay the course. Imagine the sound decisions you’ll make in the face of adversity.

Imagine knowing that you have the wherewithal within you to overcome the self-defeating behaviors standing between you and the success of your business strategy.

Pretty awesome, isn’t it!

The Business Strategy Realization Requirement: Time

Posted by
Jackie Nagel, Synnovatia

What would you say if I told you that putting a business strategy in place before unearthing 10 hours a week is very much like “putting the cart before the horse.” (As my Mom would say.)

The struggle to find time to carry out the most carefully crafted business strategy is real! You can’t wait until you have time. You’re already overwhelmed. Instead, most small business owners I know “pile on” the execution of their business strategy on top of an already jam-packed week. It’s no surprise that goals aren’t achieved, and everyone’s exhausted!

Imagine, instead, a week with 10 hours available for the successful implementation of your business strategy! These are 10 hours each and every week that remain unscathed by interruptions, distractions, and every other activity that diverts you from pulling the trigger on your strategy and achieving your goals.

Uncover 10 hours Each Week with small (but mighty) changes

Time is your greatest ally. It allows you to solve your problems by achieving your goals. It’s the distinctive difference between success and struggle. And, with a chunk of time readily and dependably available each week, you are unstoppable.

Before you say “yeah but,” consider some adjustments you can make today including….

1. Reduce time spent on email by 50%. Adobe’s recent study demonstrated that the average professional spends 3.3 hours each day checking email. Based on your billing rate, what is the cost?

2. Reduce the number of times you check email daily by 50%. Some studies show the average person checks their email an average of 6–20 times per day. Is that really necessary? Most of us check email more frequently than necessary merely because our email program is open. That leads me to point #3….

3. Close your email program when focusing on strategic implementation.

4. Minimize distractions and interruptions. A UC Irvine study revealed that most people are interrupted after only 11 minutes into a project and it takes an average of 25 minutes for the brain to return to the point of productivity it was at prior to the interruptions. How much time could be created by minimizing interruptions?

5. Automate. Free up time — and yourself — with automating tedious, repetitious activities.

6. Schedule virtual meetings when possible. With technology like Skype and Zoom, it’s much easier to capture that face-to-face connection during a meeting while saving time spent on the road.

Speaking of meeting time…

7. Reduce the duration of meetings by 50%. Meetings are definitely a case of “work expands to fill the time it has to complete.” Ask anyone who has to endure several meetings a week.

8. Avoid “poking around” on social media. I love the brutal honesty of my client who recently announced that overwhelm sparked paralysis….so they opened Facebook. Haven’t we all done that a time or two?

9. Hire it. There comes a time in every business when you, as the owner, can no longer “do it all.” A virtual assistant can take over time-consuming tasks to free you up to focus on your strategy implementation.

Are you ready to make some of the changes necessary to ensure you have 10 hours each and every week to implement your carefully crafted strategy? Finding 10 hours to count on each week won’t be easy. It will require you to make difficult — albeit rewarding, choices.

Free Business Growth Strategy Worksheet

I’d love to hear from you. What other ideas have you successfully implemented to carve out more time for the big, important things in your business?

The Best Kind of Business Strategist for Your Business Growth

Posted by
Jackie Nagel, Synnovatia

With business becoming increasingly complex, business owners are faced with a variety of challenges — the most prevalent being overwhelmed by all there is to do in a day. This distressing situation is a far cry from what many of us thought growing a business would be like.

With days peppered with distractions, interruptions, emergencies, employee challenges, and client needs and demands — there isn’t much time left at the end of the day during which to think strategically about the future of the business. Without an opportunity for this sort of fore-thought, many small businesses are left to experience the same results year after year.

You may have started your business 5+ years ago but does your business growth reflect that duration of dedication to continual improvement? Or, like many business owners, does this year look like any other — minus your ever-increasing stress level. Once this “groundhog day” experience is realized, it’s bound to let the air out of the most optimistic entrepreneur’s balloon!

The Business Mad Hatter

If you happen to be one of the 24,331,403 nonemployer establishments reported in the US by Census Bureau as of 2015, you occupy all the roles and responsibilities in your business. You not only wear multiple hats — you wear all the hats!

You’re the Founder, chief executive officer, chief financial officer, marketing director, VP of operations…the list goes on and on.

One of your most critical functions seldom discussed is that of your role as the strategist for your business.

Embracing Your Role As Business Strategist

As a business strategist, it’s your responsibility for creating and implementing a strategy that helps your business achieve its goal. Within this role, you set smart goals, establish tactics and, most importantly, create a system for accomplishment of the tactics.

Here are a few things to be aware of in your small business strategist role:

  • continually look for positive outcomes within what can be a restrictive framework when resources are limited
  • exercise common sense in creating viable plans particularly if you’re an overly optimistic entrepreneur
  • look to the future to ensure your plans are moving you in the direction you intend
  • continuously be aware of and take your competition into consideration
  • advance quickly on releasing products/services to the market
  • continually clarify and adjust your direction as needed
  • ask yourself probing, challenging questions — then provide an honest assessment
  • pay attention to gaps between your goals and results
  • pivot when needed to prevent you from continuing to bang away selling a product/service that’s not profitable
  • plan for and leverage risks
  • develop a hacker/hustler mindset

Your role as business strategist is challenging. It’s not only your responsibility to come up with fresh, new ideas to grow your business, it’s also your job to take these ideas, create viable plans along with the structure to bring your ideas to fruition.

Without someone to play this role, many bright innovative ideas never see the light of day…and, sadly, many business owners fail to realize their dream of financial independence.

Don’t let this happen to you. Understand your role as business strategist and embrace it wholeheartedly. Keep your head in the game and operate with focused effort. Trust me…you won’t be disappointed.

5 Things Your Business Strategist Wants You to Avoid

Posted by
Jackie Nagel, Synnovatia

Business strategy…what is it, really!? And, is my small business even big enough to warrant a strategy?

These are only a few of the questions that arise during a meeting between a business owner and his or her business strategist.

Most businesses — large and small — struggle with strategy. What is it? How is one created? Who’s involved? And, finally, what’s the big deal…especially when you’ve survived for several years without one.

It’s not the kind of work most of us care to do. It’s hard! We have to dig deep and do our homework to come up with the right strategy that grows our business and survives the test of time. Frankly, we all just want to open the doors, turn on the lights, fire up the computer, and let the phones ring.

Ahh, if it were only that easy.

Business Strategy: Why it Matters

We belong to a global business community. As a result, we experience greater competitiveness than we did five years ago. In light of this heightened competition, business demands a clearly defined strategy for how we’re going to achieve our business objectives given the opposition. It’s a continuation of the hard work you did in nailing your business mission and vision.

Since we can’t be everything to everyone, a business strategy lets your buyer know of your unique and distinctive advantage. Plus, once your strategy is clear, decisions regarding direction, resource allocation, and high-value work take you in the direction you intend to go.

Common Business Strategy Pitfalls to Avoid

As a business strategist, I’m in an interesting position. I have a front row seat to that which causes a business to flourish…as well as those elements that create roadblocks and sluggish growth

Based on my observations, here are my recommendations of what to avoid when it comes to your strategy:

1) Avoid confusing strategies with tactics. Interchanging the terms strategies and tactics has become a phenom over the past few years.

Strategy defines a series of patterns or moves to accomplish your business’ mission and vision. Your strategy answers the question, “What will achieve our mission?” Its focus is on the bigger picture.

Tactics, on the other hand, consist of smaller steps or activities needed to fulfill the strategy. Tactics answer the question, “How will we achieve our goals?” Their focus is short-term and they flex as needed to keep your business moving in the right direction.

2) Avoid growing your business without a strategy. Not sure of which direction to go in? No problem. Let your well-thought-out strategy guide you. It aligns with your mission and vision to ensure your long-term objectives are achieved.

3) Avoid having a strategy yet not referencing it. Eek! If you’re a corporate refugee, you understand what I mean. Don’t spend valuable resources to design the perfect strategy only to use it as a doorstop. Commit it to memory. Let it guide your decision-making.

4) Avoid being too rigid by hanging on to your strategy long past its usefulness. Think Motorola who quickly lost its competitive edge — and ultimately had to close the doors — because it failed in its ability to scan the competitive landscape and update its strategies to reflect the current times.

Evaluate your strategies on a regular basis to ensure it continues to create the competing lead needed to achieve your goals

5) Avoid hidden biases. Be aware of assumptions that may be influencing your objectivity in creating the business strategies that will grow your business. Seeking evidence to support your beliefs about what you think your strategy should be is counterproductive. Remain vigilant and objective.

Formulating your business strategy may not be the easiest piece of business development but it’s certainly one of the most important.

Business Growth Strategy Worksheet

The Small Business Owners Guide to What to Do When

Posted by
Jackie Nagel, Synnovatia

Working longer hours creates more work than it accomplishes.

There! I’ve said it and there’s no take backs.

It reminds me of a lecture I attended sometime in the early 80’s (likely before you were born). Judge Ziglar, Zig Ziglar’s brother, was speaking at an event in Fargo, ND. (Yes, people who hail from Fargo do sound like the movie.)

As an offspring of Industrial Age parents, imagine my shock and dismay when Judge unequivocally shared the following:

“Work 50 hours a week and you’ll be in the top 5% of your industry. Work 60 hours a week and you’ll be in the top 1% of your industry, and if you work 70 hours a week, you’re a F-O-O-L.”

What?*!# was my initial reaction given the 100-hour work weeks I was investing in my business. I had learned the lesson of hard-work to get ahead from my depression-born parents. This statement turned everything upside down!

Since then, technology makes it easier to do more in less time — or does it? From my vantage point, small business owners continue to work beyond the capacity that is wise or sensible — despite technology’s claim to make life easier.

Why Identifying Priorities Is a Priority

Is everything a priority in your world? If so, you’re not alone. It’s difficult to juggle the myriad of projects, tasks, goals, plans, and client demands to find one item that merits attention. Yet, our reluctance to invest time in sorting to uncover the priority leaves our mental and physical energy strained. Without that energy, performance suffers.

It’s the very reason we work 70+ hours weekly and are burning out at unprecedented rates. We claim we don’t have time for prioritizing and planning. Hence, we run through our days in full-on firefighter gear, carry a heavy water hose, and put out fires.

Yet, every minute spent planning, yields an additional 10 minutes for implementation. (Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up. It’s science.)

Instructions For Identifying What To Do When

Objective: provide you with tools to better sort through the endless things to do each day to identify your priority, reduce your stress, and have you delight in self-satisfaction at the end of the day. (Ta! Dah!)

Focus: solve the dilemma of “what to do when.”

Before you pull the trigger, there is a foundation on which the premise of prioritization is built. That is, deliver that which has the greatest value to the client first.

In order to respect this basis, we need to understand a few things, right?

  • Who is my client?
  • What do they value?

If you’re the business owner, you or your goals may be considered the client. If you’re an employee, the client may be the manager or CEO of the company.

If you deem that you and your goals are the client, what do you value most, small business owner? I don’t know about you but from my perspective, the ability to execute on the plans and tactics needed to achieve my goals is what is most valuable to me.

This is not to say my clients, who are reading this, aren’t important. They are! You are! However, as a business owner who works “on” and “in” her business, it’s about balance. Without the critical business development pieces needed to advance and grow my business, I quickly loose relevance and viability. Without that, there is no business for clients.

Get my point? Good. Let’s move on.

Now that you’ve identified your client, along with that which is most valuable, you’re ready to become a prioritization ninja.

  1. Create a master list. This is a catchall — a data dump, if you will — of items to complete by the end of the week. In my world, this happens Monday morning. You don’t need anything fancy other than the back of an envelope and a pen. For techno geeks, trello is an effective digital variation.
  2. Spell out your achievement. This is a crystal, clear picture of what you intend to achieve by the end of the week as it relates to your goals.
  3. Identify high value items. Based on what you determined to be the greatest value to your client, as defined by you, what activities from your master list have the greatest impact on your achievement? Place a “HV” next to them. (HV for high value.)
  4. Reorder your master list. Realizing that you likely won’t get to everything on the list, placing the high value activities at the top of your list. BAM! Your priorities are revealed. You are now able to quickly identify the top 20% of your activities that create 80% of the impact on your goals. (Dang you, Pareto Principle!)
  5. Begin execution and delivery of high value activities.

Sound simple? It is….sorta. Once you develop the habit of objectively identifying high value activities, it becomes easier.

Final thoughts: Your high value activities will continue to shift based on the needs of your “client.” Be willing and ready to swap out equally high-valued activities as needed. Plan with only enough detail to deliver the first increment of value. Then, rinse and repeat!

Are You Ready for the Risk of a Small Business Startup?

Posted by
Jackie Nagel, Synnovatia

In small professional service businesses, there are options for choosing the services to provide. This is generally divided into camps — services you can provide based on previous skill and expertise and those services you’re most passionate to deliver.

What may seem like a clear-cut choice for some is really quite agonizing for a small business owner. This is particularly tormenting in the early stages of business growth and development when cash — or lack thereof — dictates decisions.

The Struggle of the Small Business Startup

This was certainly the dilemma experienced by one of my clients…

They left the safety of a well-paying, albeit boring and unchallenging job, to spread their wings in the unrestrained and exciting world of entrepreneurship. They have dreams. They long to be involved in work that flipped their switch, got them excited to get up every morning, and fed their soul.

Yet, they found themselves at the intersection of a very important decision.

Past employment allowed them to hone skills involved in services they can provide. Yet, the work choked the life force from their being.

Do they “play it safe” and focus on providing the services they can even though it makes them a bit queasy? Or, do they “take a risk” and deliver on their passion?

Safety and Security vs. Risk and Vulnerability

Risks are scary. They create fear and anxiety, which most like to sweep under the rug. Who doesn’t love a good “out of sight/out of mind” phenomenon?

Starting a business opens a world of uncertainty. There is unpredictability associated with revenue generation, client acquisition, and industry competition. There is also a danger of events that pose a risk, such as an unforeseen economic turndown or a weather calamity. (OMG, I’m scaring myself now!)

Yet, it’s only when one is willing to take calculated risks is the satisfaction of success experienced. Until we’re willing to discuss the fears standing in the way of delivering the kind of work we’re passionate about, we continue to live beneath our dreams, desires, and potential.

So, have the discussion. Get your fears out on the table. Sort through them. Find solutions that reduce exposure so you can face the fear and take the risk.

All Posts

Core Business Assessment

Download

Testimonial

Brooke Billingsley

Vice President
Perception Strategies

Synnovatia is a strategic coaching firm that is detailed and knowledgeable about business. i have a small business that grew from $150K to $750K because of the goal setting and resources that Synnovatia provided. It saves me years of learning on my own.

Search The Blog