Balancing Optimism with Optimization
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Optimism, for lack of a better word, is good. Optimism makes it easier to be proactive, to take the kinds of positive steps that can grow your business. It takes, among so many other things, optimism to launch your business. It takes perhaps even more optimism to keep it going, particularly if you face early setbacks. On balance, being optimistic is an important trait in business or really, any endeavor.
However, too much optimism can be dangerous. That’s especially true if it leaves you unprepared.
The Importance of Smart Optimism
Look at the guy in the stock photo here. He came up under a search for “positive” — but he also looks like he could’ve come up in a search for “Person Who Just Lost Everything and Needs a Moment.”
A survey from sales enablement (among other things) company ringDNA found that “positivity and confidence about the future is extremely high,” in regards to a “positive economic outlook.” The survey found that “75% of respondents (indicated) that they are optimistic” while “51% said their future outlook was positive, with an additional 24% saying they were ‘very positive.’
There’s nothing wrong with that. That level of optimism makes it easier to succeed in any kind of business, as you’re less likely to be that disappointed when something goes wrong.
That said, the survey also found that “19% expected a rebound in Q3.” That could be a problem.
As I say to people seemingly all the time now, “in the last few months I’ve learned that I’m not exactly good at predicting the future.” It’s great to be optimistic, but, if you just assume that there’s going to be a big rebound in Q3, you could be setting yourself as well as your business up for problems.
Hopefully, the “second wave” of COVID-19 doesn’t come. But, as of this writing, it feels like the first wave never really ended. More and more companies nationwide (and particularly here in the Los Angeles area) that had begun to open up are now starting to shutter and hunker down again.
It’s important to hope for the best, yes, but it’s also important to be ready when something goes wrong again, too. That’s just one more area where we’ve been helping our clients.
A Plan that Can Pivot
For the last few months, much of what we’ve done at Website Depot is to better help our customers to adjust to changing situations. That means that we’ve been altering their social media posting strategy, content, SEO, branding, and more, all to focus on ways that they can better help people right now.
What might have seemed like a great plan up until March 2020 has been changed more or less “on the fly,” to better fit where customers, clients, and more are right now.
Hopefully, by Q3 (or sooner) there’s a great, big rebound, and everything’s OK. However, it’s important to take the steps you can to ensure that your business is OK in case that rebound doesn’t come, either.
When you reach out to us, we can sit down with you to figure out the right strategy for your company. Then, if those strategies have to change, we can do that quickly, too. For more: (888) 477-9540.
