What do you make of “against-all-odds” success stories? Sometimes, it does seem like luck is such a big factor towards personal success. A smart entrepreneur, though, wouldn’t be too shaken up by this fact. You know you can make your own luck in your business decisions.
This works because you’ll spend your limited time focusing on things you can influence. It’s a powerful principle to live by, no? As the boss of that business, you have a say on many different things. How do you cope? Usually, solutions for business challenges come from your skills and experience garnered in business – like those Indian kids being mentored in the family business right now.
You may not have had that privilege before you started your business. Luckily, the steps to making correct business decisions are practically unchanging. Can you list these steps down? Nice! See how they compare to ours:
1. Put things into context
People are so judgemental because they never take time to put things into context. When was the last time you were guilty of this? You should have known that even if the same problem arises, the solution doesn’t necessarily remain the same. In this context, your business decisions depend on what is on top of your priority list, consequences of not addressing the situation immediately, and similar concerns.
2. Come up with plan A and B
And probably plan C, D and more. You’ll be surprised by the number of Kenyans who don’t come up with contigencies and just wing it. It’s not “living in the moment,” it’s reckless. Contingency for small businesses means remaining flexible. You should be open to changing direction if your initial solutions don’t work. You’ll be impressed by how “lucky” you’ll become.
3. Get your tool box
It’s 2019, what kind of woman doesn’t have a tool box? Anyway, you can’t even talk about implementing your business decisions if you didn’t do 1 and 2. This is why our leaders seem bordeline crazy (I know, they also want to “eat” and stuff. Whatever). Implementation of business decisions manifest in resourcefulness and inventiveness. These are qualities every small business in Kenya appreciates because we are all very constrained for resources.
4. Theory to practice
Here comes the most boring part. It’s the easiest but the hardest. Like, how many times have you promised to develop better habits? But you end up going for the bottle again and eating too much meat. In business, it will be that other things will come up. This causes you to lose focus in seeing through the change your promised by your decision. You promise more sales but get discouraged, for example. There’s not much we can do, you have to wear the big pants and accept the bitterness of being disciplined, consistent. Do you really wanna come all the way to step 4 and drop the ball?
5. Never again
We’re not asking you to be perfect. “You’re perfect just the way you are something something.” That said, you don’t want to keep coming round to the same problems. You need performance metrics that always raise how awful your bad days will be in future. Go get them, now.