Doing Harm To Your Business On Purpose

Consider these words by author and artist Zoe Zantamata about making decisions. Decisions. We can think about things, turn them over in our minds a million times, play out possible scenarios, but really when it comes down to it, you have to go with your heart and move forward. Maybe things will go well, maybe they'll turn out poorly. Every decision brings with it some good, some bad, some lessons, and some luck.

The only thing that's for sure is that indecision steals many years from many people who wind up wishing they just have the courage to leap. Today, let's dive into making decisions that will hurt your business in the short term, but are still the right thing to do for the long term. I'm Howard Mann, and this is the Business Brickyard Podcast. Certainty of the negative without equal certainty of the positive keeps businesses frozen in time. There is a question that comes up often when I am speaking with entrepreneurs that have been in business for a while.

They want to know how they can fire bad clients without hurting or maybe killing their business. Almost every business has grown by taking on clients that either looked like the right client at the time, or simply were offering to pay you at a time when you really needed the money or were so focused on growth mode that any paying client was seen as a good one. But over time, you have dealt with their verbal abuse, never being satisfied with your work, or paying you so slowly that it puts financial strain on the business. It's easy to say just get rid of them, but we know that doing so will mean a drop in revenue, profit, and then a reduction in expenses and staff to offset that reduction in revenue and profit. When I have been asked about what to do about this, I have given a variety of answers and strategies, but none are truly satisfying because the implications to the business are often severe and point to a much larger issue.

I'd like to talk with you about that larger issue. How does one make a decision that they know will hurt their business in the short term without 100% or even 80% certainty that it will help them in the long term. You know what you have, even if it is not making you happy or as successful as you want. So how do you make the leap of faith to damage your business in order to make it better? Maybe you have clients that cost you more than you earn from them.

Maybe the market is shifting under your feet and you need to make a big investment to change how you do business. Maybe you need to make some key new hires to allow you to handle larger clients long before the revenue from those larger clients come in. How many of these decisions are you putting off? How long have you been struggling with a status quo that has long lost its status? How bad does the pain have to be in your business before you make these hard decisions?

Here are fewer but better questions to consider: How can you do everything you can to ensure the successful outcome after you make these hard decisions? How can you get more comfortable with the short term pain these moves will create so you can get through them with more ease? First, I must admit that while my thinking on this topic is not fully baked, the pervasiveness of the problem for entrepreneurs is crystal clear. For any of you wrestling with this issue, I want to bring it back to the front of your brain. Why?

Because putting off these decisions will never ever make it better. Second, the reason there is no perfect answer to the What do I do with my bad clients question is that the answer will involve some level of discomfort that you may or may not be ready for. The fear of self inflicted damage to our business, despite it being the right thing to do, stops the decision dead in its tracks. With this in mind, I want you to think deeply about the downside you are worried about. How real is it?

How long have you been putting it off? And at what cost to you and your business? At what cost to your staff that has to deal with these bad clients? At what cost to morale? At what cost to the clients that you actually love?

Can you think through all the steps you would need to take that will take you from this hard decision to the lasting change you want to create? How can you make a plan that minimizes the pain and gets as close as possible to guaranteed success? When will you do it? If you can take the time and space to meticulously think through the path to a much larger future for your business, and still will not take the action to create it, then the only thing that is stopping you is fear. If you will indulge me here a bit further, I want to relay a recent lesson about fear that I have found to be a helpful mantra: Fear is in the waiting.

You may be familiar with ex Navy Seal and author Jocko Willink and his book Extreme Ownership. You may be less aware of a terrific children's book he also wrote called The Way of the Warrior Kid. In it, a young boy is grappling with being bullied and an overall lack of confidence after a tough year of school. His Navy Seal uncle is coming to spend the summer and among many other things, teaches the boy to swim. The culmination of this swim instruction is a leap off a bridge that is above the river they have been practicing in.

The young boy climbs up to the bridge and as he prepares to leap, becomes frozen with fear despite knowing that he is now a very strong swimmer and has watched his uncle jump off the bridge many, many times. His uncle comes up to him and calmly explains that the fear he is feeling only exists in the waiting. The fear is from all the bad possible outcomes that are filling his mind despite having done everything necessary to be ready for that jump. The fear is in the waiting. You may never be 100% sure about the outcome of the tough decisions you need to make to dramatically improve the future of your business.

However, if you have done everything possible to prepare for the leap you know you must take, then the only thing stopping you is fear. Put in the planning. Get comfortable with things being worse for a while so they can finally get better. Be confident in your plan. Then stop spending time in the waiting.

Recognize it as just fear, and then jump. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Hey there. Just a few quick notes before you get back to work.

My goal is to make this podcast as useful as it can be for entrepreneurs who are not fulfilled by the businesses that they own. Your feedback, questions, and comments are not just welcome, they're encouraged. So please feel free to email me at h howard Mann dot com. Also, be sure to jump over to howard Mann dot com and join my mailing list. When you do, you will get a PDF of my book, Your Business Brickyard, for free and will be first in line when I launch new coaching groups and special events.

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