Following new paths (going business off roading™) is popular as well as perilous. It’s a huge decision and may or may not be the best thing you could do to grow or expand.
Do you match any of these four types of business off roaders™? Is this the right choice for you?
1. Serial Entrepreneurs
The most obvious example of business off roaders are serial entrepreneurs. They buy or start multiple businesses; sometimes related, sometimes not. Mergers and acquisitions, successful or unsuccessful, are off-roading activities. Like Lays Potato Chips, it’s hard to “eat just one.” Once a business owner starts down this road, they keep making to outsiders what may seem like 90 degree turns at every opportunity. Done right, they keep growing. Done wrong, they lose a lot of time and money.
2. New Business Owners
The desire to take Robert Frost’s “Road Not Taken” leads new business owners down multiple paths at the same time. Like the dog in the Disney movie Up who pivots and points when he sees a squirrel, they have to run after each new potential road to success. The economic impact of all that “off roading,” chasing opportunities and customers, is that the business gets stuck in what we call “survival” mode — anything for a buck in order to keep going. That’s the peril.
The pleasure is that it allows the owner to explore, refine, and make choices. It’s never boring unless the owner gets tired of always starting over. It takes a lot out of a new business, something I know firsthand. We started as a training company to the oil field during the last great oil boom. When it went bust a year later, we went off roading to find a way to stay alive. Six national economic downturns later, we’re still here but we gave up a lot and changed a lot — even changing our business name and model.
At some point to get to stability, new business off roading has to stop — or at least slow down. This allows the owner to create business systems, policies, and procedures and off road again with greater confidence that things will continue working properly.
3. Inventors
Inventors off road as a way of life and a state of mind. They see a problem (any problem) and immediately try to figure out a solution, then find a customer. To inventors, fixing the problem and meeting the challenges along the way is intoxicating. That's the pleasure and also the peril of business off roading for them. Most have no interest in moving on to the next step: finding customers who will pay and building a real business. They just keep searching for the next problem to solve.
It’s a very hard way to grow sustainably. The inventive solution is the easy part; the day-to-day running, managing, and growing a business and its people can be the hard slog — too unrewarding for inventors but critical for business success. Many good ideas wither and die because they were a diversion, unsustainable, or unprofitable. Few inventions end up licensed. Some do and many invented by small business owners: the zipper, contact lenses, the airplane. These “Cinderella” stories keep this off road adventure alive and well.
4. Established Business Owners
Even owners of established businesses aren’t immune to the call of going off road. They often respond by deciding to
- write a book about their experiences or an interest.
- speak.
- train or consult.
- create a new product or service.
- buy a related or unrelated business.
Their pleasure is in doing something new. Their peril is in doing something new. Exploration of new ideas and opportunities keeps their businesses alive and vibrant but it can also be a money pit or a business killer. A commercial cleaning service company decided to stop cleaning and go into selling cleaning products they didn’t make or control and were just one of many other resellers. It was a road they should not have gone down without more preparation, planning, and strategic partners.
Before You Take Your Business Off Road
In our experience growing thousands of companies of all kinds, we find that 50 percent of businesses end up with a different model and customers 10 years after they start. We do encourage our clients to look for opportunities to engage in business off roading and enjoy the experience.
Since you may or may not be part of that 50 percent, here are some things we recommend you ask first before taking your business off road:
- Are you emotionally and financially prepared for failure or success? Either may happen. You want to consider the demands on you personally and the changes that will have to happen.
- Is your business prepared for you to spend real time trying out other opportunities and leave it? If not, stop, prioritize, and fix the critical parts so you have something to come back to. Probably setting the right priorities and accomplishing them are the hardest places to go business off roading.
- Are you just bored and need a short adventure or are you willing to really follow through if this turns out to be the right way long term? "Try it, you’ll like it" won’t cut it.
- Can you get help? Talk to another owner who has gone this way and is willing to share the “gotchas,” or find a strategic partner who is further down this road and can take you with them.
- Most important, can your business off roading be tweaked so that it uses what you’ve already built in terms of customers, image, partnerships, deliverables, or expertise? This is the most fun and profitable way to enjoy the adventure.
Happy trails! Here’s to your success!
