“Being Safe Is Risky”
~ Seth godin
A few years back I was hanging out with my father-in-law and his buddies and they were all talking about their concerns over their children or grandchildren. Even though all their kids were out of the house, they still worried about them. I came to the realization that day that there is a good chance that I’ll never stop worrying about my kids.
Why do we worry about our kids? It’s because we care about them.
Worry exposes the fact that there is something you care about. Caring about something is good. But caring turns bad when your focus goes to worrying about losing it. This is called fear and it usually paralyzes action. It gets our mind racing and thinking too much, instead of acting. It causes us to play it safe.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve personally had a heck of a time making a decision on who our target customer segment should be in our business. I help my customers focus on their target customers, but I really have a hard time doing this myself. When I think about making this decision, I immediately think about all the business we could lose. I also think about the fact that I will need to sell more, which also freaks me out.
But these thoughts are all based on fear and they cause me to hide behind over-analysis. This hinders action which limits learning and making good decisions. Strangely this inaction is the surest way for me to not have a company in five years. Playing it safe is risky business.
I’m done playing it safe. My journey over the last couple of weeks has been to 1) call out this fear, 2) make a decision on our industry focus, 3) take action to create marketing materials to target this customer segment.
Curious to hear what the decision is? You’ll have to keep reading these posts to find out. 😃
