things are as hopeful as opening day of the baseball season. Every year, I welcome opening day as a symbol of getting a fresh start, a clean slate.
Opening day of the baseball season is a new year that’s truly new. The box score reads 0-0. All things are possible. It doesn’t matter how you did before, or what other people think of you. For instance, on opening day 2002 Sporting News and Baseball Digest predicted the Anaheim Angels would come in dead last in their division. That year, they won the World Series.
I don’t like many of the sports metaphors used for business, but if any sport is analogous to business, it’s baseball. That’s because:
Get Over It!
My friend Ann, a psychotherapist, recently shared with me her two-step program for mental health: “Get over it. And stay over it.” I’ve found Ann’s program serves equally as a terrific prescription for better business health.
Ann’s advice sounds flippant, but it’s not. In every life—and every business—bad stuff happens. We all encounter our share of defeats and disappointments, disloyalty and deceit.
When bad things happen, we have to deal with them. But there’s a difference between dealing with something and wallowing in it.
Most of us know someone to whom we’d like to shout Ann’s advice: an employee who harps on situations resolved long ago, kids who keep whining even though you’ve told them “no” ten times, a spouse who brings up old spats like a broken record.
“Get over it!” we’d like to yell. “And stay over it!”
Yet, we, too, may find ourselves stuck on old issues. If we tried making a big change—introducing a new product, opening a new location—and failed, we may be paralyzed and afraid to try anything new again. If we entered into an important relationship—with a partner, supplier, spouse—and were cheated or mistreated, we may find ourselves mistrusting everyone. It’s easy to nurse old hurts.
But old hurts block new ideas, new chances for success or happiness. When we’re stuck in the past, we can’t move forward. To improve our businesses, and our lives, we have to find a way to forge ahead. So no matter what failure or setback we encountered, we have to learn how to get over it. Once we do, we have to teach ourselves how to stay over it.
When we’re stuck in the past, we can’t move forward.
That’s not easy. So how do we follow Ann’s two-step program?
Real problems have real consequences, and they have to be resolved.
Business failures or setbacks typically leave us with financial, credit, or legal messes needing to be cleaned up. It may take a while to get those straightened out, but doing so is part of the process of getting over it. Neglecting them is a sure way to stay mired in the original defeat.
Getting over it also means trying to figure out what happened and why. It’s easier to move forward when you see what you’ve learned from a bad situation, what you’d do differently next time, what you can do to make it better now. Perhaps you need to apologize to those you’ve wronged or forgive those who’ve hurt you. And, if necessary, say your goodbyes.
Yes, I know, some things are impossible to forget. Failures, losses, disloyalty—you can’t just pretend they never happened, and you wouldn’t want to. It’s important to remember your past, what you’ve learned, what you’ll change.
But remembering isn’t the same thing as holding a continual pity party. Old hurts are like scabs—they heal best when you stop picking at them. When you find yourself thinking about old disappointments—feeling angry, afraid, or sorry for yourself—make yourself stop. We all have internal conversations with ourselves. Now’s the time to remember Ann’s two-step program and tell yourself firmly, “Stay over it.”
“Get over it—and stay over it.” I’m not sure I’d advise you to use those words the next time your mate, child, or employee complains. But it’s a good message to give yourself—again and again. Because once you’re over those old defeats, you’ve got a better chance for new victories.
5
Strategy
Focusing on Your Focus
Whenever someone asks me to name the biggest problem for small business owners, my answer comes as a surprise. I don’t recite the expected litany of typical responses: paperwork, taxes, finding good employees. No, I reply with one word: Focus.
In a small business, there are so many different things to do, and so few people to do them, that an entrepreneur has to continually juggle priorities. It’s very different than working in a big company, where there are specialists for every product line, market segment, and area of operation.
At one of my workshops, one small business owner told me that throughout her work day, she thought of herself as having different job titles: Marketing Director, Chief Financial Officer, Director of Operations, shipping clerk, and so on. And she was an artist!
Handling so many tasks at once is exhausting. You’re constantly pulled in different directions. You’ve got a To Do list for each area of your business that could take up all your time. It’s very easy to end up feeling that you’re not succeeding very well in any of them.
Compounding the problem is that many of us are, in essence, running more than one business at once. Not out of choice, but of necessity.
For instance, a landscape designer might prefer to
