Going For The Business Home Run

I see it more often than one would imagine, small business owners attempting to turn their fate around by going for the home run, hitting it out of the park! Then it’s easy street, or so they think. This plan almost never works. Yet despite the odds, too many small business owners believe in the “one big order to save the business” theory and they waste their precious time chasing windmills.

There are many examples of such events occurring. It does happen and when it does, there is cause for celebration. That’s assuming you can deliver and the price is good enough to allow a profitable exchange. But to make this an obsession to the exclusion of doing repeatable, profitable day-to-day business, building slowly but surely, is a huge mistake.

Seldom can we hit the home run to win the game. It happens when you least expect it, it happens when you are just trying to hit the ball, it happens when everything you are doing is being done well. Making the home run the plan is a plan that is unsustainable and unlikely to carry your business where you need it to go. Do business correctly, efficiently, and consistently and you may be surprised with an occasional homer.

When you think this way, it’s ego controlling your decision-making, being unwilling to build one brick at a time, wanting the glory of immediate satisfaction rather than taking pride in building something solid and successful over time. The tried-and-true method is the best method and, in these times, may be the only method.

Even worse is the act of constantly seeking out only the long shots, constantly swinging for the fences believing one will hit it out of the park. If only it worked that way. The truth is, if your plan is to hit home runs, your plan will fail. If your plan is to do business effectively then occasionally you may get an extra base hit.

Don’t ever stop dreaming. Keep looking for opportunity, but stop making your plans based on the home run theory – it is not the way to win games. Be appreciative when one goes out of the park, but don’t count on it.