Future Thoughts

Entrepreneurs are pre-programmed to ‘think big’ and usually I find they spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about how the future will impact their businesses. While this is clearly a positive on one hand, it is often dangerous for small businesses to constantly think about the future at the expense of your customers’ immediate needs. Perhaps this seems obvious, but in the tech world where new technologies can upset the known world in months it is easy to get into the trap of predicting the future.

I have certainly been guilty of this in the past. But I’m glad I’m not alone! Just the other day I had to catch my partner and tech-entrepreneur from trying to build a product based on a future technology that won’t even be released for 1 year and then not even widely disseminated for another 3.

I think the key is to catch yourself if you find yourself saying “my businesses will succeed IF THIS occurs”. The introduction of that little ‘if’ adds an element of risk which may doom your business from the start. I believe that you should build products to solve problems that your customers are experiencing now. I often have to remind myself that I am not running my business in the future, I am running it in the present.