Entrepreneurship

Danger vs. Fear

How we're thinking through this time as a business.
Aloke Pillai

Things seem highly uncertain right now.

With news breaking every hour, the entire world is following numbers going up or down. The anxiety feels crippling. Businesses are pressured to make hard decisions. These times are tough, but here is a reminder to all the business owners: tough times build resilience. The danger is real, but fear is a choice.

Being a bootstrapped team, we naturally protect ourselves against having our resources of time and money being spread too thin. This can push you into a scarcity minded approach of cutting all costs and hunkering down.

This past weekend, we did an exercise to be on the same page about the risks and rewards of the business. We wanted to find an abundance mindset and envision the opportunities of what version of ourselves we wanted to see coming out of this tough time. How do we want to be more disciplined or what areas of the product do we want customers to fall in love with?

We asked ourselves a few questions:

  1. What are our personal and business goals in the next 12-24 months?
  2. What are sure ways for our company to fail? How do we avoid that?
  3. What does the future of our market look like? What are customers asking for?
  4. What is the worst reputation we can have as a company? How do we avoid that?

Going through this exercise allowed us to align as co-founders about what's important to us and what we want out of the business. It has helped us think more clearly and set the right goals for the coming months.

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