Episode Transcript
Key Takeaways
- Business is fluid and requires adaptability to change.
- Fear of failure can hold back progress in business.
- Making mistakes is essential for learning and growth.
- Opportunity cost is often greater than the cost of mistakes.
- Encouraging innovation and risk-taking is crucial for business success.
Business is Fluid
So life is going to move forward, business life is no different, business life is going to move forward. The market, market conditions, market realities will change every single day. And if you’re not in the market, you can’t adapt to that change. If you’re getting ready to get into the market, you can’t adapt to that change.
If you’re getting ready to build that new website and you haven’t done it, right, even if it’s crap, it’s better than not having one because you can change it, right? This is the thing that I want you to understand, that business is fluid.
If you’re getting ready to build a new website and you haven’t done it, even if it’s crap, it’s better than not having one because you can change it.
Fear of Failure
Welcome back to another episode of the Practice Perfect podcast. If you own a medical cosmetic practice, you’re a plastic surgeon, or you own a med spa, then you’re definitely in the right place. All right, the title of today’s episode is going to be, it’s okay to make nonfatal mistakes in business, even fatal ones. The reason I want to talk to you about this topic today is because you may have seen business people that open up competing businesses with you if you’re a physician, or you may have a business and you’re wondering why it’s working or why it’s not working.
And I’ve seen this over and over in the practices that I work with, and I wanted to really shed some light on this because the fear of failure can really, really hold you back. Now doctors, just like engineers, some business people that are engineers first, tend to have a harder time struggling with making mistakes, and this is because doctors are analytical by nature. It’s not your fault.
Playing Not to Lose
That ends up happening, and this is a great quote I heard from somebody, is that you end up, instead of playing to win, you end up playing not to lose. And that happens a lot because in the past, I’ve had clients that were more interested in how their logo looked than if their staff was picking up the phone. They were so concerned with making sure that every little detail was correct that they were missing the bigger picture. And like I said, that’s great.
You end up, instead of playing to win, you end up playing not to lose.
Activity vs. Progress
If you’re performing surgery, you can’t take any risks. You can’t have a mistake. You have to make sure that every detail is perfect or the patient is not going to be happy. But what I want you to do is to start to learn to focus on what moves the business forward.
Not insignificant details. Those things are things that you can swing back around to later. You don’t have to worry about making sure that every little thing is perfect every single time and sacrificing progress as a result of that. In my book, I say that activity doesn’t equal progress.
That’s one of the main premises of the book. But it’s also true that preparation doesn’t equal progress either. So I don’t want you to get stuck constantly getting ready to take your first step. Take the step and then adjust to the conditions later.
Taking Action
You don’t sit when you wake up in the morning, you go outside. I happen to live in a colder climate, so we do get cold days with ice. I don’t sit there at the front door looking out of the door thinking, should I take this first step? Should I go?
I leave the door open, I’m standing in the doorway, and I don’t sit there for an hour wondering if I’m going to slip, how I should put my foot down. I just go out there, I put my foot down, feel around a little bit. If it’s not really icy and I know it’s safe, then I move forward. This is the same analogy that you can use in business.
Opportunity Cost
Unfortunately, in business, it becomes very easy to sit back and start analyzing everything, making spreadsheets, getting ready to get ready to make a move. A lot of times, analytical people satisfy their need for accomplishment through this preparatory process. You may have made all the spreadsheets, the projections, everything you wanted to do, but not actually made any move to take action on that. Until you take action, nothing happens.
What you fail to achieve by not taking action is going to cost you a lot more than anything you could ever lose by taking it.
Fear of Losing Money
Let’s get to fear number two. This is the second biggest fear that I come across. It’s typically the fear of losing money.
Here’s the truth about money. A lot of people look at money as this great thing and they think if they invest or even spend or waste a few thousand dollars, $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $100,000, that it’s the end of the world. Oh my god, biggest mistake I’ve ever made. I just lost $30,000 because I chose X marketing company and they didn’t do a good job or I put out this newspaper ad and I got zero results even though the rep promised I was going to get everything in the world from putting out this full page newspaper ad.
Learning from Mistakes
So I really want you to understand that, that money is always replenishing, and it’s okay to make mistakes, because the mistakes buy you the information that you need to start making the right moves. And it doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong. What matters is the learning, so you can improve, and you can move forward with your next decision. I’m going to give you a quote right now to let you off the hook a little bit.
And this is from Ray Dalio. If you don’t mind being wrong on the way to being right, you will learn a lot. If you can’t tolerate being wrong, you can’t grow. And that’s the truth.
If you don’t mind being wrong on the way to being right, you will learn a lot. If you can’t tolerate being wrong, you can’t grow.
Encouraging Innovation
Now this fear of being wrong also translates to your stats. I want you to understand that it’s not just you I’m talking about. You need to encourage your staff to take risks. You need to encourage them to make mistakes. Because the reality is that if you’re not innovating, you’re going to die. If you don’t innovate, you die.
That’s just the way business is. Businesses that innovate, that look for new opportunities, before the previous opportunity runs out, that’s something called the sigmoid curve. I may do an actual post on the website about that because it needs some visuals. But typically, that is a cycle.
Leadership and Mistakes
Now, I want to give you another quote. This one’s from Jack Welch. If you don’t know who Jack Welch is, he was the chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001. During his tenure, GE, their company value rose by 4000% on the back of his leadership.
And I want to give you a quote directly related to this. And here it is. When people make mistakes, the last thing they need is discipline. It’s time for encouragement and confidence building. The job at this point is to restore self-confidence. I think piling on when someone is down is one of the worst things that any of us can do. That’s from Jack Welch.
When people make mistakes, the last thing they need is discipline. It’s time for encouragement and confidence building.
Conclusion
So that’s the parting thought I want to leave you with, not taking action is going to cost you a lot more than anything you could ever lose by taking it. So as always, if you want the show notes, and if you want any of the links or anything that I ever speak about in these podcasts, or the transcripts, if you need them, then by all means, please go to thinkbasis.com click on the podcast link, I think eventually we will do a dedicated URL that will redirect to that as well just to make it easier for you. So again, if you want to do that, just go to thinkbasis.com and click the podcast link and all of the episodes will be there for you as well as any of the show notes. Thanks for listening. I hope this was helpful for you.
Now stop listening, go out there and take some action and I will see you on the next podcast.