JB NOVA – A Blog for the Entrepreneur

A personal crisis doesn’t have to spell disaster for your business if you’re prepared.  Every business occasionally endures a crisis, but what happens when your dilemma isn’t falling profits but personal.

Because we have no idea what type of personal crisis may await us – an ugly divorce, debilitating disease, or ailing parent/child/spouse, we must be prepared. Just as you plan for advertising and promotions, you must plan for life’s surprises.

Paul Krasinski, founder of Lion Strategy Advisors, New York, suggests finding somebody NOW who can take over your responsibility and carry on for at least 20 days.  He/she needs to be someone who can communicate well with staff and command respect, and may or may not be the person you feel closest to in the company.

Once a personal crisis hits, Krasinski recommends “full disclosure” to your employees. This avoids the feeling of being hit by a bomb, and that business will go on as usual.  In case you think this doesn’t work, let me give you a case history.

Dana Weidaw, 28 and president of her own PR firm had only been in business 1 year when she tested “full disclosure” with her employees.  She was diagnosed with an aneurysm which required a surgeon to drill through her skull.  She had just landed her first major client and was publicizing a major hockey arena.  If all didn’t go well with the project, this client could turn out to be her last.

Before missing 7 days of work, Weidaw prepped her full-time employee, another agency she was working with, and her client by sharing the nitty-gritty details of her crisis.  She assured them everything would run according to plans and smoothly in her absence, and found that everybody was willing to work around her crisis.  Weidaw found that, by nature, people are very sympathetic.

A word of caution though, you need to know when to talk.  During and after a crisis – full disclosure is great.  If you’re “contingency” planning though, it might be prudent not to advertise that if your personal life goes in the tanker good old Gary or Suzy will be in charge.  Your employees may needlessly dwell on why they weren’t picked to run the show instead of them.  Above all, you don’t want to cause widespread distress or distract your staff from day-to-day operation.

Just as surely as you plan for financial allocations for your business, always have a crisis plan in place.  This may need adjustments from year to year as staff leaves and are replaced, so when planning for each year’s business needs include your crisis plan.

If there were one thing central to doing business, that would be towards developing your self. And that exactly what famous entrepreneurs go through.

Well, it’s only between them and themselves after all. The battles they have to get through and the risks they needed to confront to be able to get from square one to the second juncture of your business will all pour down as instruments for their own self-realization.

Since personal development is different from one person to another, we cannot give an actual characterization or pattern for various stimulus (e.g. risk taking, failure of business transactions, lack of funds, etc.), even as we see them unfolding for famous entrepreneurs.

If you want to be like them, it would not harm if you follow these guidelines.

Discovering where you are good at is one of the earliest stage in becoming an entrepreneur of your own business. Knowing your forte and turning it into productive means will not only produce a good source of income for you but will also extensively nurture you as a person. There is no telling how much you would improve once you become the founder of a business you decided to take.

As many of us would agree, getting the most of life’s lesson will only be possible if you are taken at the center of all the challenges. That way, you would get to experience things first hand. And you would learn to cope up with the pressing problems in ways you thought would have been impossible if you were not the captain of it all.

In a sense, venturing into business entrepreneurship does not only mean that you’ll get better (or worse) financially. It also requires you to develop yourself full-blown depending on your reactions to specific risks and problems you would have deal with.

Operating a new enterprise or embarking on a new operation you have not done before is surely a thing that would create developments in you. Before you do you must know the risks and be able to prepare yourself with the possible failures that are their eternal parts. The way you would handle them will be able to test your limits and will be used as boundary points when similar undertakings come in the course of your business. You must know that you alone is accountable for all your decisions in attempt to make your own business grow. You must understand that it is not those who labor for you or those who share the capital with you who will spell the success. It is you, as the entrepreneur will decide what courses to take. Thus you’ll either lead your group to success or failure.

With each trials you have, you and your group will meet new changes that will require you to go with the flow or to go beyond it. Both ways, you will hone yourselves. Both ways, you will learn to cope. And both ways your personalities will be taken into newer heights. Thus you will develop.

Therefore, personal development in the business world is largely dependent on how you manipulate factors.

Chances are small that you would not grow, even if your business fails. The fact that you have taken responsibilities on things that only few take is reason enough for you to consider as a pathway for self-realization.

Business entrepreneurs are specifically:

• knowledgeable of the opportunities that lay in their paths
• they are keen to various chances in pursuing growth in areas like professionalism and personal development

Some may not actually realize the extent of their progress. Nevertheless, once something is changed in them and that something has changed towards good, there is absolutely a degree of productive change which whether they choose it or not, will be applied to other things important to wholesome living.

As I have repeatedly implied, the opportunity for personal development is high in the business world. Business entrepreneurs, to be able to meet success, should have a good combination of attitudes, skills, beliefs systems and training. All these would work together towards extending product services to those that need them.

People who have been through extreme hardships are those who are most beautiful. They have learned to take risks and turn those risks into opportunities. They have learned to compromise their present leisure in exchange for future growth. They have learned to welcome failures and prove other people’s doubts wrong. They have learned through their everyday business battles that it is always too late for giving up.

No matter what type of business you’re in or what position you hold, you must be able to sell your ideas to others.

If you’re the owner, then you have to sell your ideas to your employees or your board of directors.  If you’re an employee of a business then you must be able to sell your ideas to your boss, your company, or your clients.  It seems that in this life, no matter whether it’s in business, relationships, or parenthood you had better be adept at selling your ideas to others. (more…)