Warning: You Find What You Look For

Hot Tip:  Before I leap into my article, I wanted to remind you that you can attend one of our upcoming events free online.  It's 90 Minutes of fun, interactive, effective and important online training being delivered on June 21.  Sign up now. There's no charge.   You can see one of our early workshops online on S4Stv. 

Fortune Cookie Wisdom . . .

What goes around, comes around. Look before you leap. Nothing ventured nothing gained.  Why is it that the most important insights for working entrepreneurs can always be summed up in sentences that fit inside fortune cookies?  

For new entrepreneurs, I often think "You find what you look for" is a notion so important they should have it tattooed on the back of their right hand. Financial success depends entirely on solving the right problems.

As a simple example:

• If a man decides his objective is to "get a job that generates some extra cash for the family this summer" the places he looks for work, the people he talks to, the tasks he undertakes will be consistent with that objective.  Most likely he'll manage to generate a little extra cash this summer.  
• If a man decides his objective is to "start a little side business that will generate some extra income for his family year round" the options he explores, the people he talks to and the tasks he undertakes will be entirely different.  
• If he decides his objective is to "start a business part time that he can turn into a full time enterprise that will be sufficient to comfortably support his family" he may well adopt yet another set of strategies.  

This insight is also critical to those in the midst of running an enterprise. For example, a business owner who is not making enough money from his business may decide he needs to:

• Reach more of his target market
• Convert more of the prospects he has into customers
• Close more repeat business with existing customers
• Improve the product packaging to ensure that customers who have the product can easily refer others to where they can buy it
• Reduce his costs so he can earn more without increasing sales
• Sell his business to someone else so he can move on to other things  
• Each of these options requires a completely different set of operations. They embody varying rates of effectiveness and risk.  All these options are not equal and thus it does matter which objective the business owner chooses to undertake.

Finding Better Solutions To Business Problems

One of the toughest skills for any business owner to master is learning how to decide which problem to solve.  The following suggestions may help you learn to define what you are looking for more optimally in the future:

• First, identify that something needs to change. 
• List five to ten descriptions of the problem you are having, it's presumed causes, and it's symptoms.  Make sure you list very specific symptoms of the problem because often it is only the symptoms of the problem that impact you.  Most of us would be completely happy with our cash flow if we could pay our bills.  That means we can be happier with either more money or lower costs. 
• List all the options available for attacking the problems, the causes and their symptoms. Consciously attempt to make a very long and a very broad list of options.  You will find this process gives you a wildly different understanding of your situation. After you have listed a hundred or so options you will always find that your initial understanding of a problem, and the best way to solve it are wrong. Your first answer is never your best.
• Ask others for more options.  The larger the problem is, the more important it is to get outside input. Ideally you would like to get help from people who have successfully faced similar problems, but even very naive advice can be good. Part of the insight you gain comes from explaining the problem to others.
• Following this process may mean that you don't respond as quickly when a problem comes up. In fact, it almost guarantees that you won't.  But you will probably find that despite the slow start, a successful resolution comes much faster.

If you want more practical advice or insight into how to start and run a successful business, visit www.schoolforstartups.co.uk.  We have hundreds of articles online, and we offer new online and face to face courses all the time.  You can also follow us on twitter @s4s.