Are You Hitting Road Blocks?

Do you ever get the feeling that all you’re good at is hitting road blocks? It can get very discouraging, especially when you’re trying to get your business off the ground. But should road blocks be seen as negatives?

Or could they be trying to give you some good advice?

I grew up with a person who constantly wanted to find a shortcut. No matter where we went, the road map was kept in the glove compartment, and we traveled by instinct.

Needless to say, over the course of time, it felt like we managed to find every dead end and road block in the Western Hemisphere.

Of course it got somewhat frustrating at first, especially when we had to be somewhere at a certain time, and the “shortcut” made us late.

However, as we came to expect it, we just got a chuckle out of it, and chocked it up to experience.

In fact, it actually became a game for us over time, because we’d each guess how long it would take before we had to turn around in someone’s driveway and head in the opposite direction.

Who knew there’d be a business lesson in this . . .

The point I’m trying to make here is, if you’re trying to start a business, there’s always going to be some experimentation involved. No one can give you the perfect business plan that’ll work for you.

So whatever course you set out on, it probably won’t work unless you add your own touch to it.

This means you’re going to go through a trial and error period, or to put it bluntly, you’re going to be hitting road blocks.

Naturally, it can get you feeling downright negative when it seems all you’re hitting are dead ends, yet at the same time, this might be giving you a vital lesson in navigation if you let it.

Getting back to my traveling childhood . . .

One situation we seemed to always get ourselves into was, winding up in small neighborhoods.

Now if you ever wanted to do a documentary on how to find dead ends and hitting road blocks, that would be the place to film it.

Close housing, tiny streets, one ways, and cul-de-sacs abound!

It only took minutes to get lost, but it was the process of elimination that really got us wasting a lot of time.

Each street had to be tried, because our illustrious driver just knew one of them had to get us through, and suddenly we’d be at our destination.

But it never worked out according to his calculations. We’d inevitably have to leave the neighborhood and find the main road again.

Step away from that road block! But how far? . . .

So what does this have to do with knowing how to avoid hitting road blocks in business?

Sometimes when we hit a snag in a business plan, we tend to just step back one level when we should back up several. This is usually because the problem may not be the one tactic we’re experimenting with, but rather the place we’re trying to make it work in.

An obvious example might be if you’re trying to build a marketing business through a particular affiliate program.

You may be trying every which way to make sales with their products with little or no results. You keep tweaking your landing pages, your persuasive sales copy, and even the prices if you have the ability to do so.

But you keep hitting road blocks.

Well, maybe it’s not you at all. Maybe it’s the products, and so rather than trying to market them, perhaps taking a few steps back and trying some other affiliate program might be a better match for you.

Sometimes you have go back further than one step in your plan to find a better road to follow!

And this is the same in every facet of business building no matter what type you’re getting into.

Some companies trash entire departments because they don’t fit the over all business model rather than trying to make them fit. Others restructure their entire course of business to find a better mode of operations.

Business is a constant process of trial and error. The secret to success is in knowing where the error is, then back tracking as many levels as necessary in order to make going forward work.

Thus if there’s any element of experimentation involved in your approach to business, and there always is, you’re going to find yourself hitting road blocks from time to time.

If you view them as a negative, they’re going to get you down and frustrated.

But if you see them as a signal that there may be a structural issue (going back several levels) rather than an implementation problem (tweaking), you’ll still find yourself hitting road blocks, but you’ll be in a better position to determine how far you need to back up before you see a clear road to success.

Just remember, negativity is a road block too. Find you way clear of it at all cost by doing what you have to do!

Further Reading:

Logistics: Building Your Business With Common Sense