You’ve likely heard the analytic about a business owner really being a firefighter because they’re busy “putting out fires” all day long. The problem is a firefighter is reactive and only around when there is an actual fire and are mostly not focused on fire prevention in the first place. As a business owner, you should seek to prevent fires, which means you must be proactive instead of reactive.
- Develop SMART Goals – You may be tired of hearing about SMART goals, so that I won’t go into in-depth detail here, but suffice it to say the best tool in your business to become more proactive versus reactive is through using the SMART goal system to develop workable and doable goals for your business.
- Know Your Mission and Your Vision – Write a mission and vision statement for your business that you can share with stakeholders and read yourself when you’re doubtful about a choice you’re making.
- Use Data for Decision Making – While your gut can help you follow your own principles, morals, and values as you make choices for yourself and your business, the data is what should guide you the most. You may simply love a particular product or service that just won’t sell to your audience, but if you’re not studying your metrics, you may not realize it.
- Embrace Long Term Planning – Your business plan is supposed to be a living document updated and changed as your environment changes. Your business plan in 10 years will look completely different from the business plan you created at startup, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
- Watch Your Competition – The competition is an important metric to look to as you choose what to do. You don’t want to get into a situation where you’re simply reacting to your competitors to keep up. For example, getting into a price war with a competitor is always a big mistake for a smaller business that cannot take big losses.
- Keep Informed – Stay on top of industry news, customer desires, and trends. You’ll notice opportunities that you can invest in when you do, as well as problems that might disrupt your current business model. This will enable you to craft a plan before you’re forced to act.
- Engage Customers – Your customers are the lifeblood of your business, and you should be listening to them the most. Set up surveys, feedback loops, and chatbots to help you engage continually with your customers so that you can be sure to offer solutions for their problems within your niche proactively.
- Delegate, Automate, and Outsource – As the owner of your business, your job is really one of planning, not doing as you list the tasks that you need to complete in your business or home note which ones can be delegated, automated, or outsourced and set up forward-thinking benchmarks so you will know when it’s time to implement one of them.
If you can think it up, you can research it and plan for any eventually from floods to illness to economic downturns and even killer technologies. It requires forward-thinking, strategic planning, and a willingness to let the data guide you while focusing on your overall mission. Being proactive is genuinely the key to having a resilient business that can bounce back from almost anything – it might come back in a different form, but it’s not without planning, and due to that will become an amazing success.
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