Ride and Survive The Economic Wave

One of the key things I learned in doing business over the years is this: The economy is cyclical.

This means it is almost guaranteed to go up and down all the time. And that’s why we, as business owners, need to learn how to read the play, and anticipate the wave to ride it.

The problem is that if you’re stuck in the engine room and you’re too busy doing all the work in your business, then you won’t be able to plan for the wave.

So, what should you do?

Simple.

Start adopting a planning cycle.

If you don’t want to get caught up in the wave and complain about all the bad things happening to your business because of the economy, then you should start planning ahead.

And when I say planning, I don’t mean just doing it once every year and being done with it.

Just like the economy, you need to understand that planning has to be done in cycles, too. To stay ahead of the competition and be unique in the marketplace, you need to set up planning cycles so you can plan, execute and revise as necessary.

For us, we do six-week cycles and we have a two-week break to adapt to the ever-changing economy.

If you think about it, it’s pretty much like having a GPS in your car that helps you recalculate your route. If you take a wrong turn at the end of the street, you check your GPS to see what you need to do next to get to your destination.

In the same way, your plan has to be reassessed after you've moved forward, because one of the traps with planning is that when we write a plan and then learn things, most of the time, our plans don’t really change.

So, if you want to get results for your business, make sure you start having planning cycles.

That’s how you can ride the economic wave to victory.