Thinking Entrepreneur

An owner’s dispatches from the front lines.

It is time to complete the budget for 2013. I now have the final numbers from 2012 to help in the planning/forecasting/guessing game that I have been playing for 35 years. My comptroller reminds me that every year, for as long as she can remember, she has had to reduce my projections by midyear. Great. Is it a shortcoming to be optimistic if you own a company? The answer is yes, and no. At the moment, more yes.

This year did not turn out as I had planned, or perhaps as I had hoped. There was no big recovery in either the economy or in my industry (home furnishings). We did make some progress, but I had budgeted and spent money as if we were going to be in a recovery or growth mode: more people, more inventory, more advertising.

I have lived and navigated through many recessions, and I can tell you that this has not been a normal one. In the good, old recessions, you would have a down year and then recuperate slowly over the next one or two. We are now in year five, and while things have clearly gotten better, we are hardly back to where we were in 2008. The unemployment rate is still high, and most small-business owners I know are still struggling.

And it’s not just the economy. The whole business environment is constantly changing, and it can be especially difficult for a small business to keep up. It is harder to borrow money, Web sites demand attention and dollars to keep them up, inexpensive imports continue to change the dynamics of the marketplace, and the government sideshow of perpetual crises – election, fiscal cliff, debt ceiling — continues to make people nervous. And none of it helps the unemployment rate, which should be of concern to everyone.

Still, it is hard to get anywhere as an entrepreneur without being optimistic. If you’re like me, you eventually begin to develop something of a split personality. When I am playing sales manager, I have to encourage my employees to shoot for ambitious but realistic numbers. I told one of my managers that I feel good about our prospects for next year, and she reminded me that I say that every year. Oops. Another colleague has seen through my rosy glasses. But what am I supposed to do? Ask people to strive mightily for mediocre results? On the other hand, it is also my responsibility to sign off on budgets and then make sure that the numbers are reached. That job is not nearly as much fun, and that’s where the split personality comes in.

So here is my conclusion. We need to make two budgets: one that is reasonably optimistic and another that is reasonably pessimistic. The optimistic one is for sales meetings. But, human nature being what it is, it is important not to surround yourself with yes-men who will sign off on whatever you say when you are feeling good. Send in the accountants! The second budget is the one to use for financial planning and spending.

This year, in my reality-based budget, I’m not factoring in any big turnaround in the economy, and I have reduced expenses in an attempt to ensure an acceptable profit. To me, this represents one of the most important things I have learned from the many ups and downs of building small businesses: the difference between setting goals and making a plan. Goals mean nothing without a plan.

I have also learned that whining and pity parties have no place in entrepreneurship. Misery might like company, but it does nothing to help build a company. Yes, the business environment has gotten more difficult for many small businesses, but that just means that we all need to pay more attention. In sports, when you finish a disappointing season and go home, you have six months or so to ruminate about what went wrong.

When you run a small business, you don’t get time off to think, but you also don’t go home a loser. Instead, you get to hit a reset button on Jan. 1. You get to start the new year with new wisdom, a clean slate, a new plan, perhaps even a new sense of optimism (but mostly a new plan!).

So, my fellow entrepreneurs, I encourage you to do a 360-degree analysis of what you could and should be doing better — and then make a plan to do it. No goals. A plan.

Jay Goltz owns five small businesses in Chicago.

Article source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/can-i-afford-to-be-optimistic/?partner=rss&emc=rss