Self-Inflicted Wounds

There's a gross narrative in our culture that drives me bonkers. It's the narrative that small businesses are helpless victims, set up to fail. There's a widely accepted story being told - over and over and over - that the survival of small businesses rests solely on the "support" from people around them. To me, that sounds like a combination of a pity party and a guilt trip. It speaks to some twisted perception that businesses aren't good enough to survive without external intervention.

I've worked with dozens of businesses. Some large, some small. Some thriving, some struggling. I'll cue you in on a little secret nobody wants to acknowledge: most of the struggles small businesses face are the product of self-inflicted wounds. We business owners make bonehead decision after bonehead decision, then quickly find someone to blame.

I could give you a hundred different examples, but I'll give you a tangible and embarrassing one from my world. Last May, we adjusted our Northern Vessel menu prices. We recalibrated our recipes, upgraded some of our ingredients, and wanted to adjust for supply-and-demand dynamics. We made our adjustments and moved on with life.

Fast forward to early this week. One of our team members noticed that the price for one of our drinks differed between the menu and our register system. That's interesting. In short, our second-highest-selling item on the menu was priced 50 cents less in the system than on the menu. Therefore, every time we sold this drink for the past 13 months, we've undercharged by 50 cents. 50 cents.....that's not a big deal, right?!? It's just 50 cents! Well, we've sold 17,000 of them since we changed the menu. At 50 cents per cup, we've lost out on $8,500 of revenue. After factoring in transaction fees, that means we literally threw away $8,200 in pure profit due to a self-inflicted wound of being too dumb to change the system correctly. Ouch!

Self-inflicted wounds! How many self-inflicted wounds are we carrying around with us every day? In my own business, I can probably count a half-dozen, at least. If I'm being honest with myself, I have nobody to blame but the guy in the mirror. If I don't want to be honest with myself, I can just whine and tell myself stories about how people don't "support" me as much as I'd like. Truth is truth, and sometimes the truth is that we're carrying around self-inflicted wounds.

Sure, I could tell everyone to just stop making dumb and hurtful decisions....but we're human, and we're always going to screw up. It happens to all of us. The key here isn't to stop making mistakes. The key is to recognize our mistakes, take ownership of our mistakes, and create processes to prevent them from happening next time. The best small businesses I know aren't the ones who are mistake-free. Rather, they are the ones who quickly recognize their own failures, take quick action to remedy them, and grow through the experience.

That applies to business, but it also applies to life.....all areas of life! Most of us are walking self-inflicted wounds. Let's recognize it, remedy it, and grow. That's what makes this journey called life so interesting.

____

Did someone forward you this post? We're glad you're here! If you'd like to subscribe to The Daily Meaning to receive these posts directly in your inbox (for free!), just CLICK THIS LINK. It only takes 10 seconds.