Business = No Excuses

You can win in life confidently, or you can make excuses and accept losing. It may sound "hard-nosed" or some may call it "tough love" and it's clear why this would be  perceived as such. Let's think about it. 

Understand, when attempting to create and/or maintain a business, you run into roadblocks. It's only a roadblock if you allow it to be. To understand that, let's first think of what can be a roadblock in creating a business? Picking a business name (1 of many examples). We had a client that was so sure that their company name was ABCXYZ and website would be ABCXYZ.com (not the actual site but just an example to protect identity) and they were SURE of this. We did a general website view instantly and that domain not only existed but was in an entirely different language. I took Japanese in High School for 2 years, so I am sure it was Japanese. I asked the client if this was their website. Obviously the answer was no. They were SHOCKED. 

Now was that a roadblock? They truly felt like their entire company was not worth creating, based on not having the "dream" website domain they wanted. To me, that's not a roadblock, it's an excuse - excusing yourself from your own mis-step of not checking. They could have easily did the exact thing we did, during the time of creating a company name. Proper business planning, makes for a winning business launch with NO EXCUSES - that's what we at S&L train our business clients to understand. 

The point being made is this; there are either good or bad business moves with nothing in the middle. The good business moves will place you in a position that will benefit you short and long term. You must plan, predict, over estimate, and attack your goals consistently with full force. The bad business moves will place you in a position that will harm all progression. Improper planning, under estimating, and procrastination with strong inconsistency and minimum effort. There is not an in-between in business. No maybe deals, either you sell or you don't. Either you succeed or you fail. Win or lose. Breaking even, is just another way of failing in the realistic business world, no excuses. 

All of this can be done with the S&L iMAGINATIONS® No Excuse model. It's been explained through this entire article in various perspectives. Simply detailed; Address all possible roadblocks before they have a chance to arise. Ask the business dreamer side of you the question, "What if?". That's why Business Plans are so important when starting a new endeavor. This leads you to discover roadblocks you may face without expecting them, then we work around them, and later conquer them. The best successes we've seen in clients comes from readiness to uncover the roadblocks before a business is officially active. It's like buying a house with possible plumbing issues, hard pass! Who wants to fix the entire plumbing 5 months into buying a new house? It's just not good business...

Business is not luck! View it from the marketing, all the way to working with customers directly. All these interactions can be predicted, planned, and controlled to the expectations of the business. Imagine an establishment you do business with on a regular basis. Let's use a gas station for instance. Why that gas station? If they changed something you liked about them, would you continue to go? I use one specific gas station because I feel the gas is cleaner and thy have a mini grocery store. I also get points for swiping their rewards card. That business controlled that experience. How? They plastered marketing around the store, boasting their clean gas with proof. Rewards points are a great idea, and customers depend the points it basically. I understand what's going on technically and I'm still convinced by their planning. Whatever the reason, they had a vision of who they were as a business, knew what they wanted to achieve, and knew the customer demographic they would appeal to.

 - As previously stated: Good Business is not luck, it's planned. 

Can you get lucking in business? Well, yes. Would I bank my personal savings on the hopeful notion of getting luckily rich, no thank you, some of us have sadly experienced that fate. Consider the least harmful outcomes, like wall colors, to the most outlandishly harmful outcomes, like natural disasters. Plan, predict, over estimate, and attack your goals consistently with full force. So whatever comes your way, you're ready, and won't do excuses, and will do good business.