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The Small Ways that Businesses Can Control a Setback
Running a business is not as easy as most entrepreneurs will make it seem, especially if you’re looking at Instagram.
All you may be seeing are big smiles, clever memes, and “huge profits” --but there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes. One of them is setback. It’s rarely spoken of while it’s happening, but it does happen. And surprise, it’s normal.
Any successful entrepreneur you’ve seen on Linked In has gone through it. The biggest companies we see today went through several setbacks before they became a success.
So don’t be discouraged if you’re currently going through one. We’ll make it easy for you by sharing some small ways that you can control a setback.
1. Ask For Feedback
Get feedback from all the parties involved in the setback. Let’s say a customer left a review that could damage your reputation. You’ll have to go to that person and get more input from them. It’s hard to hear that your business is less than perfect but by doing this, you learn your weaknesses and take the right steps to improve it.
2. Keep Calm
It’s easy to go into panic mode when you’re experiencing a setback. However, this will not help your business at all. If anything, it’ll affect your employees too, making them unproductive at work. A good leader knows how to stay calm during a calamity. By keeping calm, you can rationally look at the situation and come up with a good solution.
3. Get Some Perspective
A setback can seem like a big deal at the moment, that you lose focus of the big picture. If a problem occurs in your business, take a step back and see how this all plays out in the bigger scheme of things. You may realize that it’s nothing compared to the other successes that your business has been having.
4. Delegate
Don’t be afraid to ask for help during this time. This means you have to pass on some tasks that you yourself cannot do at the moment. You have to be at your most focused, so if something is taking your attention away from coming up with a good solution, delegate, delegate, delegate. You may also even automate! For example, if it’s almost payday, you may consider having an accounts payable systems set up so employees get paid on time, rather than you doing it all yourself.
5. Find Out Why
Once you’ve cleared out the noise and have had time to focus, it’s time to dive deep into the reason why the setback happened. On a surface level, it may have just been a dozen dissatisfied reviews but the real root cause could be that product quality does not meet the standards. In this case, you can then create a more appropriate solution to prevent the setback from happening again.
6. Get Support
You don’t have to deal with the problem all by yourself. Sometimes, you need another person to give you some insight. In your case, you want to look for an expert in your industry who can help you through this difficult setback. They can give you some advice on what to do and help you stay calm during this time.
7. Focus on Your Goals
It can be easy to get blinded by today’s problems that you fail to see, or even forget what your original goals were. When you’re having a setback, take this time to look back at your goals. Did this really impact your business that much? If so, what was the learning experience that can bring you closer to those goals? Setbacks really do suck but the good news is that you learn from them and they act as great motivators to do better in the future.
8. Take Action
You may be procrastinating a lot for fear that you’ll make even more mistakes. But now is the perfect time to implement those actions you’ve come up with. You can begin with the smallest actions and progress to the bigger ones.
Which of these tips did you find the most useful? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Meet The Author:
Susan Ranford is an expert on career coaching, business advice, and workplace rights. She has written for New York Jobs, IAmWire, and ZipJob. In her blogging and writing, she seeks to shed light on issues related to employment, business, and finance to help others understand different industries and find the right job fit for them.
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