Avoiding indecision in your business
As a coach, I’ve witnessed a lot of suffering in business. Some of it is normal and transient, but a lot is persistent. The continuous suffering is almost always due to indecision in the face of a universal business dilemma.
The Dilemma
We’ve all heard the saying “Winners never quit,” but seldom in conjunction with its complement, “Don’t flog a dead horse.” The two sayings define a dilemma every business owner has faced, is facing or will face: Do I keep going, or do I quit?
The Middle
One saying tells us to never, ever, ever give up. The other tells us to quit wasting time and resources on a lost cause. You can’t do both, so which is it? And how do you choose? Either choice might work for you. What will NOT work is getting stuck in the middle.
If:
You wake up every morning dreading the day.
Cash is always a problem.
You don’t take a regular paycheck.
You don’t know your costs or what it takes to make a profit.
You can’t seem to hire or keep good people.
You work ridiculous hours.
Your home life is a wreck.
You bid jobs from a position of fear and desperation.
You allow customers to dictate your relationship.
You lack the confidence to raise prices.
You are scared to delegate.
It feels like disaster is always looming…
You are in the middle.
A lot of us find ourselves in this position. That’s no place to be, at least not for the long haul, because it results in a lifetime of challenges — stress, piddling income, health problems, fear, long hours, low self-esteem, sleepless nights, regret and family problems.
If you are stuck in the middle, get out.
The Choices
Being stuck in the middle is a result of indecision, and the solution is to make a choice. One option is to buck up, stay the course and, despite fear and lack of confidence, fight your way out.
The second option is to quit. However, because quitting is frequently perceived as a sign of failure, friends and advisers are usually reluctant to recommend it — even when it is the right choice.
In either case, you must decide.
Rethinking the Notion of Winning
When making your decision, it is important to recognize that “not quitting,” by itself, isn’t a winning strategy. You have to quit the right things to avoid staying in the middle. To win, you have to recognize what winning is and relentlessly pursue those things.
To win in business,
you must:
Make tough decisions and act on them.
Have a vision for the future of your company.
Make a net profit of at least 10% of sales.
Have the cash necessary to run your business.
Take a regular paycheck for the work you do AND draws for the risks you take.
Know how to attract and keep good people.
Keep books and know how to use them.
Have effective marketing and sales processes.
Bid with confidence and appropriate margins.
Command mutual respect with customers.
Delegate to good people who run the business with written systems.
Quitting Doesn’t Mean You’re a Failure
We are conditioned to believe that quitting means failure. It does not. Deciding to quit is a form of winning. You win when you choose your future. You win when you act courageously and decisively. You win when you choose to not continue suffering and not allow fate, a cash flow crisis or a job gone wrong to decide for you.
You win when you choose your future. You win when you act courageously and decisively… The only true failure is the failure to decide.”
Neither are you a failure if you simply don’t like business. You are not a failure if you choose to stop doing what you don’t like or what doesn’t suit you. You are not a failure if you don’t like the risk, the stress and the hours required to run a business. Not only are you not a failure, but you deserve credit for having avoided the regret people feel when they never try and are left to wonder: “What if I had?”
The only true failure is the failure to decide.
You Must Decide
Winning at business does not happen naturally or by accident. The middle, on the other hand, does. Indecision and inaction will deliver you to and leave you stuck squarely in the middle. To avoid a life of persistent suffering, you must decide either to move out of the middle or to quit.
Quitting does not always mean shutting down. You can always try to sell your business, but that is a topic for another article.
Empowering Business Success with LOU: A Data-driven Approach
LOU revolutionizes decision-making by embedding data-driven insights into the process, ultimately removing the emotional guesswork. LOU Reporting empowers business owners to rely on concrete data rather than gut feelings. With over 300 reports, anyone in your business can get a comprehensive overview of financial trends, customer behaviors and operational efficiency.
Running your business on LOU ensures that decisions are grounded in evidence. So, if you’re trying to decide whether to keep your foot on the gas pedal or make a shift and pivot, LOU can be a helpful tool for determining the health of the business. Keeping clean books and knowing your numbers are fundamental aspects of business success.
If you read the article and thought, “Maybe I am in the middle,” — LOU can help. Maybe all you need is a few new business processes and some organization. With LOU, there are built-in processes that keep your company humming. Maybe you’re scared to delegate because you do things on paper and have no audit log. Problem solved with LOU. Or maybe you are bidding jobs from a place of desperation because you don’t truly know your costs. Do you know what your billable ratio is? Or are you just pulling rates from the sky because you don’t have software that can help you find the answer? LOU can help you solve these problems.
LOU acts as a financial compass, allowing business owners to navigate toward the goal of a net profit of at least 10% of sales. With robust analytics, it illuminates trends, providing a clear trajectory for profitability. By relying on accurate data, owners can fine-tune strategies and ensure that financial goals are not just aspirations but measurable achievements. LOU helps achieve business goals by allowing you to transform raw data into actionable insights. It propels business owners beyond aspirations, providing the tools necessary to make informed decisions, set realistic goals and steer the business toward lasting success. With LOU, the journey to business triumph becomes a data-driven, strategic endeavor. Learn more at evosus.com/lou.