What to Do When Your Business is Slow
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR BUSINESS IS SLOW
Article by John Scardina
Photo Credit: Anum Tariq
Magazine: Issue #42
We all seek perfection as an entrepreneur so that our business will be clean cut and perfect in appearance and operation. To what extent do we really need to go to achieve this?
I was thinking the other day, mostly due to the fact that in my part of the world it has been hot and humid with little to no rain. You find ideas at the strangest times! While looking over the yard, garden and lawn I took notice that I would have little need to cut the grass for a while. A marvelous event for me, if you have seen the yard. A chance to have 3 additional hours all to me, that I own to do anything else. While deciding what to do with this extra time I realized something, although this weather has slowed or stunted the growth of the garden and lawn it did nothing to hinder the overabundance of weeds.
Wait for it now, remember I have an additional three hours to play with as I choose! Seriously, this is how I spend my free time. It hit me like a rock there is a parallel between the garden I stand on and often ground myself with, and my business!
In the garden or the lawn, we nurture and provide it with time, love, fertilizer (natural of course) all in order to keep it clean cut and perfect. This also happens in our business. We sometimes truly treat our business like a perfectly manicured lawn. We weed, water, cut and pull the weeds. But the second business slows down (gets dry if you will) things begin to wither away if we don’t adapt to the dry times. We need a plan to get us through these dry spells. We need our business to be like the weeds, adaptable and perfectly suited to thrive whether or not it’s watered.
We really need to create a business plan that adapts and grows like a weed in this ever changing world. A business that will grow and reach for the skies when there is not enough water (clients), when there is not any fertilizer (cash flow) coming to you. That ability to get you through the dry times!
All I’m saying here is to stop “Smelling the Roses” and “Embrace the weeds”, talk with the weeds and see what they have to say about survival during tough times. Apply this time spent in nature to your business and be prepared to be able to not just survive, but thrive during those tough times!
Now this would normally be the paragraph where I tell you how to thrive exactly like the weed, but I just started to understand the language of the weeds around here your, weeds may not speak the same language. Meditate on this analogy, with your weeds and see what they have to offer you in your business. Be prepared to adapt and change as needed, let your business be a weed.
