The Next Stage

“Leave emotion behind and make important business decisions based on the facts,” is a quote sitting on my desk today. As soon as I read the quote I flashed back to an employee evaluation in my early 20’s when my boss told me I needed to be less emotional about the ups and down of my position and just focus on being “all business.”

I remember trying to check my emotions at the door anytime anything rattled me. I was young and it was my first job so I wasn’t quite prepared to handle job stresses. I was green. I needed to mature as a working professional. I tried to imitate older employees who were “grace under fire.” Soon the green wore off and I was a wiser person.

A week ago I met a woman who runs a 4 year old company. Although she’s made it through the first four years in business, she still feels green. She expressed doubt in herself because she makes business decisions based on emotion. I told her about conversations I’ve had with financially successful women entrepreneurs who remember when the critical time came for them to stop running their businesses purely on emotion. They learned to put emotion aside and make logical, practical, tough decisions based on facts and statistics. In the end, it served them well.

As I watched my niece try to crawl for the first time yesterday, it reminded me of this woman again. We all have stages to conquer in life. When we were young, we didn’t know how to crawl; but we had to crawl before we could walk. Then we needed to know how to walk well before we could run. We had to be physically and emotionally ready to take on every next stage. So no matter how hard my niece tried to crawl yesterday. She just couldn’t. She wasn’t quite ready.

Today’s post is to remind those of you who feel pressured to move to the next stage in your business and simply can’t do it yet, that maybe you aren’t quite ready. Maybe there’s something more you need to learn. Maybe you need to get financing or personnel in place. Perhaps you need a better plan, an advisor or legal advice. You know if you are ready but just avoiding the step or if you’re simply not ready.

Time matures us. It turns our green ways into golden days. Be patient and proactive at the same time if you feel you need to take a few more steps to get to that next stage.