Success Is All In The Context.
Entrepreneurship! I see it every day and it is a refreshing breath of life, full of excitement like in the old days of successful businesses. But, it is a new day and although we are facing challenges, it is still happening, as it always will. New businesses are being opened every day, many of them successful. Some will fail, just as always, but more important are the ones that are leading the way, being successful and showing us how it’s done once again, teaching us lessons we learned long ago but seem to have recently forgotten.
Existing business owners are often living in victim mode, bemoaning their unlucky fate of being stuck in a deep recession with changing buyer habits, high unemployment and reduced revenues, crushed by killer debt service and increasing overhead. Failure being a near certainty. On the flip side of this are the new business owners, facing the same challenges yet with an entirely different attitude, in a different context. The new business owner is taking all the existing aspects and parameters of the new economy as the variables one must contend with and weaving them into a successful, profitable business under today’s conditions and circumstances and therefore succeeding.
The beauty of this dichotomy is in their polar opposite approaches, the context from which each business owner operates. Herein lies the magic. It reminds me of the Great Depression, when some of this country’s biggest and best businesses were launched under very difficult circumstances, but circumstances that were all taken into consideration, thus forming the basis of successful businesses that have lasted until today.
The lesson is simple. Success is all in the context, change it and change the results. It is time for all of the complaining, downtrodden, oppressed small business owner victims to seize the opportunity, reinvent their businesses, throw off their debt, downsize, use the Internet and emerge successful once again. The only barrier preventing you from success is your context. Change the context, change the results. Look at the changing economy as an opportunity, not as a disaster. Your old business format may no longer be successful but your new one can be, it is all up to you. Be a victim saddled with your old context or become a successful player with a new context. It is your choice, embrace failure or support change and decide to succeed. Others are doing it, you can also.
