Risks in Business and Relationships

It is true that many new businesses fail. Sad, but true.

Planning may be a key component and many simply don't know to plan or they were not even planning to start a business and suddenly they find they are running one.

So many of us start a business because we have an idea, or we have a passion for something. We realize there is money to be made in it, so we try it out and find out that "yes" we can do it! So we are off to the races. We make some mistakes and hopefully correct along the way. We do some things right and thankfully pull out of some narrow situations.

Others of course don't pull out of the hard situations. Something takes them out.  Would planning have saved them? Probably it would have saved some of them, but the Titanic was built by professionals and there was a lot of planning that went into it. Planning did not save them.

Some of us learn to plan along the way, because we did not know to plan in the beginning. Perhaps we should have had all of the marketing analysis done in advance, but we had never heard of a marketing analysis. We finally figured out a business plan in the second year of operation.

We all need to learn. Some of us need to learn as we go about how to do a competitive analysis, and due to financial strain we have to keep working to pay the bills as we figure it out.

But everyone needs to learn something. Those who have incredible business savvy and the wisdom of Aristotle in engineering may still need to learn how to have real relationships that are deeper than sweet talk. There are reasons that people repeat the same patterns in life over and over.

When we go looking for the wrong that someone has done we can then use that as excuse to not get too close. They have hurt someone before so we reason, they will hurt us. Well the fact is, we all have dirty laundry somewhere. Can we throw away every potential friendship because people made mistakes? Is that about them? Or is it about us?

Sometimes we act out of an orphan spirit. We were abandoned. We were rejected. We were used. So now we sabotage and call it wisdom. We say we are being authentic when in reality we are being chicken.

Business is a risk. People make mistakes. People get hurt. It is wise to minimize risk, but not wise to let fear keep you from starting or from moving on.

Relationships are a risk too. People make mistakes. People get hurt. As friends, as lovers, as mates, it is all a risk...

You risk that you have to trust again.
You risk an interuption in your plans (And if you have been strategizing your personal life like you have been strategizing your business life, that is a HUGE risk.)
You risk having to be transparent and potentially admit motive to another human being.
You risk giving up some things that you like to find shared things that you like.
You risk healing.
You risk moving on.
You risk change that in the end could be good for you.
You risk feeling alive in emotion that you have tried to kill for years.

But like business, nothing is ever gained without some element of risk.

Businesses succeed. Some fail.

The same is true of relationships.

But I for one will take risks, believing both in business and in people as Alfred, Lord Tennyson did

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

I would rather forgive someone their mistakes than avoid the potential that they will make any.

Kerry George
Loyal2U

...and I have to ask, "Who is loyal to you?"