Risks vs. Gambling…And How It Affects Your Business
November 7th, 2012 by Diane Conklin under Direct Mail, Event Planning & Marketing, Information Marketing, Marketing. No Comments.
Many people think business is a lot like gambling, because they think in order for someone to be successful in business, whether it is information marketing or if you have a brick and mortar kind of business, an insurance company, or a dry cleaner, or any kind of service you do or any kind of product to sell.
Admittedly, there are some inherent risks involved to owning your own business. In order to be an entrepreneur, or a small business owner, you have to be willing to take some risks pretty much every single day. If you’re growing your business, and continuing to flourish, in whatever kind of economy is happening at the time, there are risks to that, but there is a very big difference between gambling and taking risks.
What most people do when they to Vegas, is gamble. And, what most people do when they go to Vegas is they go without a plan, with no thought or plan, with really nothing other than their party plan. People go to Vegas to have fun and to gamble…and that’s why most people lose money, unlike the professional gambler, who has systems and strategies to use while they are playing cards, or the other games.
You don’t have to understand all the ins and outs of gambling, or even know the names of all the ways people gamble in Vegas to understand that professional gamblers take calculated risks, just like we do in our small businesses.
What’s the old saying about big risks, big reward? It rings true, but it’s also important to talk about it from the point of view of calculated risks, calculated, strategic risks, that make sense. Risks where you have planned and strategized about how you can do things that have some risk but while also doing everything in your power to increase your odds of success. Not just willy nilly, let’s go do something, and throw mud on the wall to see if it works, and lose a lot of money because it didn’t make sense and what we did was just plain silly.
So, there’s a huge difference again between gambling and risk taking. We take a lot risks in our businesses. You do it every day. It just comes with the territory, it’s what makes us successful, but don’t gamble in your business, gamble in Las Vegas.
Take some calculated risks, make some money, have fun and keep growing with calculated risks…not with gambling.
