Stop: Take Time To Think Things Through

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received came from the owner of the Internet services company where I was the vice president of marketing. We were all about speed. E-mails should be monitored and answered immediately. Our computers were constantly being upgraded to be faster and more powerful. T-1 pipelines were preferred over dial-up (I know, this dates me).

Frustration would set in when a glitch caused a delay in my productivity. Of course, one always thinks they can fix the problem themselves quickly, which was not always the case.

The advice when those situations arose: Stop a minute and take the time to think it through.

What's going on? Why? What are the options for solving the problem?

This mantra is now a major part of my philosophy in helping businesses with feasibility studies, business and strategic marketing plans, and implementation of their business strategies. Take the time to think things through.

In this era of instant gratification (IG), mistakes are made more frequently in the interest of speed. While the majority of these errors are not likely to be devastating, they can have extremely harmful consequences that could be avoided by slowing down a tad and taking some time to think. Is a misspelled word in an E-mail all that serious? Could a slight error in a financial projection derail a line of credit getting extended?

There's an old adage that applies here: If you don't have time to do it right the first time, when will you have time to do it over?

The point of this blog is to apply this mantra when you are starting a business or expanding an existing product line. Think it through. Then consider hiring an independent, third-party professional such as Fluidity to conduct a feasibility study. You'll discover if the idea has the potential to be profitable, where the break-even point is, and whether it's worth the investment to proceed.

Think about it. Is it better to spend a few thousand up front and discover the idea is best left as an idea, or discover it was too risky after you've invested hundreds of thousands?

Hmmm.