Be A Visionary Or Be Left Behind

A small business owner must be a visionary. He must always be looking into the future and leading his business to where others fear to go, or just cannot figure out how to get to. He must make his way where others cannot even see the path or what the future holds out there. He must be charting his path into the unknown, into tomorrow’s horizon, or he runs the risk of being left behind and becoming a dinosaur, extinct.

Blockbuster forgot to look into the future and see the handwriting on the wall, so did Polaroid and Wang. The entire American auto industry was left behind by Japanese visionaries. The list is endless. While these are large examples, the same concepts apply to the smallest businesses of all. We must all be looking into the future and figuring out where we must go to meet the market’s ever changing and expanding needs. Technology lasts for only a minute; today’s most popular names become tomorrow’s has-beens. Leaders are overcome daily by those with greater inspiration and vision and by those who dare to tread where others have not yet gone.

A small business owner is a leader, and a leader’s job is, in part, to plan for the future. This does not just mean how to grow what you currently have. While that is part of your job, one must also be figuring out where it is you are taking the ship and how you will navigate it there. “Onward through the fog” is one of our catchy inspirational by lines but it is also how I live my life and how I run my business, daring to go wherever my vision, my instincts, my sixth sense and my dreams take me.

It’s a little like jumping off the cliff and figuring out how to land on the way down. It involves a little adventurism, a willingness to take risks, daring, boldness, maybe even insanity, but that’s what leadership requires. That’s what it is to be a visionary.

Onward through the fog… to excellence, to the future.