What I learned about business, while under fire.
Many of us have a hobby that we learn unexpected lessons from. In my case, I am a goaltender in ice hockey. While the people I practice my hobby with, are throwing vulcanized rubber at me as fast and hard as they can, I have learned a few things that are quite appropriate to both life, and business. For now, let’s talk business:
Quick note about how to be a successful goaltender: be in the right place so that you are not relying on your reflexes to catch a puck flying at 60 mph from 20 feet away. You don’t have to be good at math to know that you have to be quite fast to make that work. If you are in the right place, all shots go right into your equipment. The shot doesn’t score, and it doesn’t hurt!
If you are a sports fan, you know that the leagues are consistently trying to make the sport more exciting to watch. In hockey, they equate more exciting with higher scoring. More goals make things more fun for a broader audience. How might they achieve this? By handicapping the goalie, for one. Smaller pads, larger goals, or rules set to make it tougher on a goalie. Typically, business is the same. More rules make it harder to do business, even if it makes the industry more competitive and allows for more equality.
How do you combat this? Double down on what makes you good at what you are. If I have smaller pads as a goalie, I need to rely more on where I am. My pads have less surface area and therefore make it easier for a shooter to whip one past me. As sticks get better, they add to the speed and accuracy of the shot. Again, making it more difficult to stop the puck.
In business, things like technology make it more difficult to stay ahead. It also lowers the barriers to entry. Oregon just passed a law raising the minimum wage, raising costs on businesses, and making it harder for smaller businesses to compete.
However, they can’t make a rule that says you have to be in the wrong place (aka, use a poor strategy.) So, by staying focused on your strengths, you are more likely to be where you need to be and catch that new business trying to pass you up. What are the business equivalents of positioning? Service, quality, and attention to name a few. If you have your customers enamored of you because they consistently get the best service from you, they will stay with you. Why? Because they know that going somewhere else is going to be, at best, the same. However, more likely, they know you will continue to provide excellent service, and they don’t know about your competitor.
If they see good service being offered by a competitor they have to ask, is the good service there just to rope them in? Or, is it for real. From you, they have always gotten the best service. So, why leave?
Finding your strategy, your advantage, and making it work for you is what allows businesses to succeed and weather the storm of change. While I am normally a big fan of change, there are some things I don’t believe in changing. First and foremost, is to stay with a competitive advantage that cannot be easily duplicated.