Image by Rick Dikeman via Wikipedia
The title of this post reminded me when I just typed it of the song, “Send in the Clowns” from the Stephen Sondheim musical “A Little Night Music”. Yet sending in the clowns is what you might as well do if you don’t look to the future. You may end up being one of the clowns yourself.
There is a danger in this sort of blog journal of stating the obvious and being trite. I try not to be obvious, but one thing we all know is that many of the clichés are actually true. Let ‘s indulge ourselves with three:
- If you keep doing what you always do you will get what you always get.
- You need to start working on your business, not in your business.
- If you fail to plan you plan to fail.
Is anyone still awake?
The way our working years are structured generally in the western world mean that may of us are likely to take our business eyes off the ball in the last six weeks of the year, thinking about Christmas. Then there is the New Year. A lot of our clients and customers go missing for a couple of months. If we are in retail we hope that they have bought from us as Christmas approaches, but otherwise, we cannot track anyone down.
The same issue arises with our suppliers, especially of services. If we urgently need to do that course or have someone in to look at the way our business works or look at our marketing, we may have difficulty getting anyone in to make a start or to give us even that one vital bit of advice or help we need.
Now we are into October, we cannot now put off any new idea, project or business makeover until about February because we will have lost about four months in planning.
So, if you have any bright ideas, work on them now. If you need anyone in for an opinion or hands-on-help, contact them (or me) now. You don’t want to be a clown, do you?
Postscript: I really don’t like clowns at all!
