{"id":2641,"date":"2022-02-01T13:27:14","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T19:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:10043\/?p=2641"},"modified":"2024-07-17T09:33:01","modified_gmt":"2024-07-17T15:33:01","slug":"understanding-internet-trends-are-key-to-your-business-plans-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/every-entrepreneurs-strategy-must-include-mitigating-the-unknown\/","title":{"rendered":"Every entrepreneur’s strategy must include mitigating the unknown"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared in The Tennessean<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know.\u201d – Socrates.<\/p>\n

My son mentioned learning about the great philosopher recently, and it got me thinking.\u00a0Whether it\u2019s leaving home to go to college, becoming a parent for the first time, or starting a business, there are some things in life that you simply have to experience to understand.<\/p>\n

In 1992, I quit my day job to start a technology consulting company. \u00a0I felt pretty good about my tech skills. I had thousands of hours under my belt doing everything from setting up networks to writing custom software<\/a> to fixing printers.<\/p>\n

I was ready to strike out my own…or so I thought.<\/p>\n

In our first year in business, I quickly learned that the \u201cdon\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know\u201d challenge was very real. \u00a0As much as I tried to learn from business books and mentors, I came to realize that a lot of business lessons have to come from the school of hard knocks.<\/p>\n

In that first year of starting our company, I didn\u2019t know spending too little could be just as bad as spending too much. I had assumed it was always best to keep your expenses low and learned the hard way that being a cheapskate can slow growth.\u00a0 It was news to me that business owners must pay tax estimates quarterly.\u00a0Foolishly doing my own accounting, I never thought to ask. I wasn\u2019t aware that spending money on advertising is a gamble that can sometimes have zero return.<\/p>\n

In hindsight, it makes sense that there are some things you have to just experience to learn.\u00a0Business is by its very nature unpredictable.\u00a0Economic cycles, new competitors, pandemics\u2014there are constant external forces that are beyond your control.\u00a0And even the decisions you can control are often subjective calls that no one can guarantee will pay off.<\/p>\n

With Socrates\u2019 wisdom in mind, what\u2019s an entrepreneur to do?\u00a0 How can you prepare for things that aren\u2019t even on your radar?<\/p>\n

The first step is to admit you have a problem.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just a problem for first time entrepreneurs. The \u201cdon\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know factor\u201d never goes away. Thirty years later, it\u2019s something I am keenly aware of every day.<\/p>\n

The next step I have found useful is to find a support group of other businesspeople to openly share experiences with. The idea is to learn from others as much as possible who are in the trenches.\u00a0Listening to others\u2019 challenges in an open, confidential, non-judgmental format can reduce your blind spots.<\/p>\n

And finally, it\u2019s helped our company to do a formal \u201crisk management\u201d document that we update every quarter.\u00a0It\u2019s a simple list of \u201cwhat could go wrong\u201d and \u201chow we can mitigate it.\u201d It\u2019s a pessimistic person\u2019s dream and optimist\u2019s nightmare. But it\u2019s a healthy exercise to go through because it forces you to be proactive in closing the don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know gap.<\/p>\n

Socrates didn\u2019t give a lot of business advice back in his day. In fact, he didn\u2019t write anything down himself. My son told me he learned one thing that Socrates perhaps should have known: It\u2019s important to write things down.\u00a0If not for the diligent notetaking of his student Plato, we might not have this sage advice at all. But this one lesson he shared with his student over 2,000 years ago deserves our attention.<\/p>\n

JJ Rosen is the founder of\u00a0Atiba,\u00a0a\u00a0Nashville software development\u00a0and\u00a0IT support firm.\u00a0\u00a0Visit\u00a0www.atiba.com for more info.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared in The Tennessean. \u201cYou don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know.\u201d – Socrates. My son mentioned learning about the great philosopher recently, and it got me thinking.\u00a0Whether it\u2019s leaving home to go to college, becoming a parent for the first time, or starting a business, there are some things in life that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2644,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atiba-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}