Why Business Owners Need to Become Intentional
The following is adapted from The Floundering Founder by Raman Sehgal.
It’s important to mention that what you’re feeling is normal. Don’t stress. Imagine you’ve reached a fork on a hike. You’ve taken a moment to stop, breathe, and take stock of where you are. You now have a choice. An intentional decision to make. You can opt to keep going without a map and just see where you end up. You can also choose to take a shorter, easier trail that will give you a quicker type of gratification — maybe a nice lake view. Or you could decide to take the harder, longer path that will give you a more fulfilling kind of satisfaction — like a spectacular valley view of six lakes and maybe a breathtaking sunset. The type you will cherish for life, never forget, and not regret. Ahem. You can read between the lines as to which I think you should take.
People like us are rarely satisfied, so the crossing you’re contemplating is inevitable. Still, it can catch you by surprise. To fiercely protect, and quite frankly milk, what you have built to date or to push yourself further, find a way to overcome these obstacles and see how far you can take what you have started. This is the founder’s frustration. The owner’s curse. To balance the cautious, protective, diligent businessperson in us with the progressive, ambitious, entrepreneurial character in us. Both valuable but at times at odds with each other. Quite the quandary.
The problem with the former option here is it seems safer, but it’s arguably riskier. It assumes nothing within your control can go wrong. If you keep your head down and keep doing what you’re doing, nothing can impact you. It doesn’t matter how hard you work and how many hours you put in, you’d be acting naively without even realising it. I chose a variation of option one, the “safe” choice, for the first few years of running my company. I was unintentional about where we were going and just kept working, head down. And then in 2014, our biggest client that represented 35 percent of our revenue went out of business overnight. This client also happened to be my former employer. I was shocked and devastated. Seven years on, it still fills me with sadness.
Fortunately, just before this happened, I begrudgingly attended an event where sales guru Ian Altman was speaking. I say begrudgingly as I was not one for “missing work” to go to a conference. I couldn’t possibly justify taking a few hours away from my laptop. What new things did I need to learn? A combination of guilt and arrogance. What a silly sausage I was. But my God, did I learn that day. I wrote so many notes as I learnt about finding the right clients, negotiation, and consultative selling. Little did I know that what I was ferociously absorbing that day would be the catalyst of my business surviving and thriving through the challenge of losing our biggest customer.
The client loss thankfully spurred me into taking stock and getting my shit together. Combined with what I learnt at that event and from Ian’s book, Same Side Selling, I ultimately adopted many of the steps that enabled me to achieve that fancy curve on the sales graph. The only silver lining of an otherwise awful situation.
I don’t want you to find yourself in a similar position to where I was in 2014. I’d rather you get your shit together before the proverbial shit ever hits the fan like it did for me.
I get that you don’t want to risk what you have. But if you didn’t have an itch you needed to scratch, you probably wouldn’t be reading this right now. You’re going to grow one way or another. But growth for you and your business can be calm, steady, controlled, and sustainable. Much like you taking the harder, longer hiking path. Sure, this path brings more obstacles, but you don’t need to sprint through them. You’re in control here. Go at your own pace with a clear plan to achieve a better outcome.
There are no guarantees in life, but you can be intentional. You can make deliberate decisions and adopt the types of behaviours that will give you the best possible chance of achieving the outcome you seek.
It’s now time to avoid aimless wandering into a future of regret. To get comfortable with being a little uncomfortable on your path of intentionality. This is the first step in the journey. My hope is that by following this path, it will enable you to live a better, more fulfilled, and successful life. And who doesn’t want that?
For more advice on how to become a successful business owner, you can find The Floundering Founder on Amazon.
Raman Sehgal is the founder of several niche companies, including ramarketing, a multimillion-dollar international marketing agency that helps companies get noticed in the global life science space.
An entrepreneur from a very young age, Raman embarked on a business journey that ultimately spanned the Atlantic — from a spare room in the Northeast of England to the bustling streets of Boston, Massachusetts, where he lives today with his wife and three sons.
Raman authentically shares his knowledge, mistakes, and learnings around the world as a keynote speaker, podcaster, blogger, Forbes Agency Council member, and guest university lecturer. You can find him online at ramansehgal.com.
