It is a pretty scary time to be navigating the waters in a small business, or a large business for that matter. Even the "veterans" you talk to have not seen such times. Irrespective of the economic conditions, we are functioning in a time where everyone knows your name, knows what you are doing, or not doing and they, your customer, have the power to broadcast that to many, thousands, hundreds of thousands with a few keystrokes. Yep, times have changed, and small or large businesses may want to begin conducting themselves "As If" someone is watching because they are, and YOU do not get to choose when and or where they show up and decide to broadcast, or do you?
Success means a lot of things to a lot of people, but the bottom line, for most of us, is that success doesn't come easy. Most people who see someone else's "overnight success" cannot fathom the months or years of hard work, lost sleep, and sacrifices made to achieve that success.
Of course success is more than money or power. I tend to subscribe to definition #1 above rather than #2. You don't have to have any of those things to truly be successful, and you can be successful in many things that won't ever provide them. In business, success merely means that you've achieved your goals and dreams.
Every business goes through tough times. Expecting to have season after season of continuous growth without any dips or downturns is pretty much unreasonable. And despite all your strong marketing pushes, there will always be times when business isn't as swift as you'd like it to be. But that doesn't have to be cause for concern. Well, OK, concern is good, but there are things that you can do to make slow times a whole lot less stressful on you and your finances.
Every now and then I'll catch a conversation about monitor envy on Twitter. You know what I'm talking about...someone posts a picture of some crazy monitor setup and all the desktop junkies go nuts over the size and quantity of monitors in someone's setup. It's like every hard working computer junkie simply dreams of sitting at mission control with a monitor for every application.
Some
of you out there are the procrastinators, or live in fear of making a mistake.
My friends', being in business is a gamble in itself. Don't expect to be
perfect, you won't. And that is OK!
There are a lot of good IT employees out there, so this is not meant to scare you. But if you read on, and this sounds familiar, I hope this can help a bit.
2 types of challenging interviews I usually see: The introvert who forces you to draw the information from them The "Salesperson" who is trying to sell you on themselves
The first summer after my oldest daughter turned 15, it was time for her to get a job. Unfortunately, despite my threats of cutting off her allowance, she had not taken job hunting seriously. Several weeks before summer started I started talking with her about getting out there so she could possibly have a job lined up and start work by the time school got out. But, unfortunately, she never made that a priority. Until she realized that she has no money to pay for text messaging!
As I age, I am constantly struck by how many things have changed, and how many of us can change with the times. When we were babies, we learned at a breakneck pace, but the older we get, the more we rely on what we already know. For some of us, even good changes can feel somewhat uncomfortable.
Certainly as a businessman I can understand the necessity of maintaining a solid bottom line, but it never made sense to me that the company could not understand that the investment in its people, and not just its managers, would be the most important investment they make.
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