It doesn’t matter what type of business you run, a hair salon to a digital information business on-line – this principle applies equally and MUST be in play for you to grow into a highly successful entrepreneur and business owner.
For any business to leap out of the gate, catch on to establish fast growth and continue to experience substantial growth the entrepreneur and management team behind it need to practice both anticipation of desire along with the habitual practice of taking action, testing, refining and mass adoption.
Let’s go through these in a little more detail so you can understand how you apply these to your business.
Anticipation
You’ve no doubt heard the Wayne Gretzky quote “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.”
That quote has become one of the most apt and repeated quotes in business as people like Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet have been officially quoted using it – and why not, it gets the point about anticipating disruptions down perfectly.
Imagine you jumped into the buggy making business back in the 1920’s (when cars began to outnumber horse and buggy) – a decade or two later, it wouldn’t matter how great you made your product, demand would have nearly disappeared.
I’m sure you remember the Beta vs VHS wars in the 1980’s – again, an entire format disappeared in a very short period of time. Another major revolution happened in the move to CD-ROM and DVD making VHS tapes and their players all but extinct from a demand perspective.
So much about business in anticipating demand, anticipating cultural, social, technological and human emotional changes.
As an entrepreneur, you need to be tuned-in and care about what is happening in the world at-large so you can anticipate changes…some of that insight will come from being close to your market, additional insight will be gained by looking outside of your market and staying in touch with markets, news and other business owners that operate outside of your market or domain.
Action
Anticipation without the habit of taking action is useless.
I can’t tell you how many times people have come to me saying that they had the idea for X or Y product a year before someone else came out with it…SO WHAT!
To me, that’s even worse than not having the idea at all.
When we work through business ideas, plans and strategies with our InfoMarketer’sZone clients – we make sure that elements of both are present so that they have the maximum potential to both disrupt and quickly grow their business as well as stay well ahead of the competition in some of the busiest markets out there.
The fact that you have deep insight into an anticipated disruption and didn’t do anything about it is not something to be proud of. If you are an “idea” person but don’t have the stomach to be an entrepreneur – then pair up with someone who does and share the idea as well as any resulting success.
Don’t be fooled though by the notion that JUST execution or action or JUST anticipating demand/disruption is enough…you MUST have both as an entrepreneur and you must cultivate both within your company as you grow your team and organization.
The good news is that you can quickly lead your market by identifying disruption and then taking swift action to prove and then tweak your entry into that market…the combination of these two elements are the very catalyst for high-growth businesses.
