Business is a Game

Being an entrepreneur is no fun by yourself. Get out your Monopoly game board, pick your favorite game piece and roll the dice. What did you get? What difference does it make?  It is just no fun playing by yourself.

Owning a business, whether it be gift baskets or anything else, is a game just as Monopoly is. You have to learn how to play from somewhere. You usually learn from sitting on the sidelines a few rounds or having someone actually teach you play by play how the game works.

There are rules to the game that you have to follow. If you just tried to jump in and play, you are bound to make mistakes. These mistakes can be costly. In the game of monopoly, maybe passing up on buying a property because you think you can’t afford it isn’t a big deal. But in the game of business, one mistake can cause you to lose money for a long time.

When you’ve been in business for a while, there comes a time when mistakes aren’t fun anymore particularly when a bit of simple advice could have helped you avoid them.

In our industry, we tend to be so afraid of competition or someone stealing one of our ideas and running with it that we oftentimes try to play the game alone. It can take us a long time to realize that we can’t possibly know it all. I’ve learned that we just have to surround ourselves with people who have different experiences, have made the same mistakes and survived, and know more about some areas than we do. We need to have people that you can turn to when you have questions.

In business, we really have two options. Either make the mistakes two or three times– just to make sure you got them right–or find someone who has made the mistakes before you.

“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” -Socrates

I’m in the same boat that you are in and that boat is the one that Socrates is talking about.  I need people, who are my peers, who have experience, who have made mistakes and learned from them.  I need these people to bounce ideas off of, to ask questions when I am thinking of starting something new, and just to share thoughts and feelings with.

If you  have been in business long enough to know that you are in that boat as well, watch for a new PRIVATE  forum that we at GiftRetailersConnection will be creating just for you (and especially for me).  It will be for those who have been there and done that — but most likely each of us will have been to different places and done different things that we can share with each other.  Watch for the announcement in early 2015 ( my gosh, do you realize that is only a few short weeks away), when we can clean up the shred, pack away the holiday enhancements, and breathe once again.

But if you are just starting your business and looking for guidance along the way, we have something planned for you as well.  Check out www.startagiftbasketbusiness.com and sign up.  I’ll send you the free ebook along with the announcement about that program in early 2015 as well.

I’d love to have your thoughts about this in the comments area.

In the meanwhile, have a wonderful rest of 2014 and learn from any mistakes that you made during the year so that you can share with the rest of us.

 

Leave a Comment