Posts Tagged ‘business survival’
As a small business owner, you ARE your business. If you have ever seen any of the worldwide “Dragon’s Den” type programmes on the TV, you will observe that the dragons invest in the person behind the business as much as the concept itself.
It is important for that business owner, to constantly watch trends, be familiar with their market, and adapt to the changes that invariably happen. We also need to keep an eagle eye on what the competition is up to, and notice what they are changing, and are those changes in line with consumer changes, or are they trying to influence the consumer / client.
This is where business owners can get “bogged down”. Constantly watching out for the enemy, copying their strategies, playing cat and mouse to try and gain ground.
Let’s say our business has been successful in the past, and now, inevitably things are tough. We batten down the hatches, cut costs, cut prices, downsize, and cut budgets. You are probably familiar with any one of these strategies.
But why do we do this? Because the strategists recommend it? Because your competition is doing it? Because of the proven facts from the past? Because historically, it works?
Think about this: where do we get the notion that repetition is the best tactic? What influences us to think that what worked before will work today, for our business?
Now think about this… is this the same type of recession as before? Will the next boom (there WILL be a next boom) be the same as the previous one? I would imagine NO, and NO!
So, why then, are we doing the same things now that we did before? Read the rest of this entry »
I am sitting in Amsterdam Airport at 6am, or was it 5am? Well it was 10am where I was coming from, so needless to say, I was a little disorientated. Armed with a strong coffee and a muffin, I began to do some work. Something caught my attention. It sounded like a bird, could there be a bird in Schiphol airport? Did it get trapped?
Sure enough, as I squinted up, there was a Sparrow sitting high above me (I was a little concerned about my exposed coffee, keyboard, open mouth and muffin, so closed my mouth). The sparrow swooped down just as a family left a table in the restaurant, much to the delight of others sitting nearby, a welcome distraction after their overnight flights and disturbed sleep.
The LBB (Little Brown Bird) began to Read the rest of this entry »
