Business Plan Beverage

Making Your Business’s Sun Shine

Back a while ago, I traveled down to Mexico with one of my business partners to spend a solid week working on a joint venture. We had a pretty big agenda, and definite ideas on how we wanted to work during the week.

Here’s the agenda:

1. Update our business purpose
2. Rewrite our business plan
3. Rewrite our marketing plan
4. Create a draft for an upcoming book.

The fact is, we anticipated doing much of this while sitting around the swimming pool, watching the ocean and ordering beverages in tall glasses that come with long straws. Our hotel had WiFi on the grounds, and we both showed up with our laptops, ready to dig in and get a lot of work done. Our luggage bulged with samples we need to review for upcoming publications, nestled in with our bathing suits and sunscreen.

What happened? We spent a complete week on the beach in Mexico in the drenching rain. Rain every day. Rain all day long. Rain that socked in as if we were in Seattle or Vancouver or the Amazon rain forest. Grey clouds obliterate the horizon. Neither of us could even tell where the ocean ended and the gray skies began.

This puts me in mind of how it is for business owners. You can plan for one thing, and the environment changes around you faster than you can say “donde va el sol?” (Where did the sun go?) Great business owners note the change, adapt, and move on. Others notice (usually too late), and then spend precious time whining rather than adjusting. In the meanwhile, their opportunity to profit has gone down the rain spout and off into the gutter somewhere.

Here are a few tips on how to make the sun shine in your business, no matter what.

1. Environment changes constantly
2. There is always opportunity in change
3. Whining doesn’t lead you toward opportunity.

Not that I am Dr. Phil, but here’s a script to stop your whining and made sunshine out of rain.

“I worked so hard and planned so carefully to do _______________ in my business this month. Now I see there are changes that are in the way of that success. I’m disappointed, but I learned from my efforts and that experience will come in useful at some point. Upon careful observation, I see that I could now change and be profitable from creating ____________________. I absolutely do what is necessary for my business to thrive. Here’s my list for today’s work.”

My partner and I have rewritten our mission statement, restated every single business goal, accepted a brand new logo from our graphics person, canceled an order with a supplier who is not working with us well, made plans for our first live event, and created 4 new tips and techniques for our book. What we haven’t done is sit by the pool or watch the dolphins play. We haven’t ruined our laptops trying to sit by the pool no matter what. We haven’t slathered on the sunscreen when we don’t need it. And most of all, we haven’t whined. The beach is still beautiful, the palm trees are swaying, and we see that a drenched Mexico has its own beauty.

(c) Sue Painter

About the Author

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