Page 64 - The Magic of Tiny Business

Chapter Three  Taking Tiny Steps

shampoo you make has a formula that uses a specific
ingredient that suddenly becomes unavailable and a simi-
lar nonorganic ingredient is available at a lower cost and
you have orders pending, what do you do? If the promise
to your employees is a four-day holiday weekend and a
rush job comes that will pay handsomely but will impact
that promise, what do you do? These challenges can only
be solved by regularly returning to your stated Tiny Busi-
ness values in order to make decisions that are in align-
ment with them.

I had started out wanting a set of conflicting priorities:
time with my new family while building a business that
would give me that time. I didn’t know yet how much skill
I would need to manage the business to get the results I
wanted. I didn’t fully understand the force of a new ven-
ture or the energy it takes to guide and ride it. It takes a
real commitment to be disciplined and requires ease in sit-
uations that aren’t easy.

In business you need to be able to pivot quickly. Agil-
ity matters. If an opportunity comes your way, your ability
to respond quickly is important. For that to happen, you
need to practice seeing all your options through the lens of
“why.”

Don’t Let Business Become Busy-ness
I have to admit that sometimes I was an alarmist, sending
my team in all directions to fix things immediately when
many of them didn’t share my sense of urgency. What I

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