One Excuse After Another.

• Author: Panaggio, Tom
• Position: BUSINESS & FINANCE - Small business management

Small business owners, can you relate to these scenarios? It is time to open a second retail store branch--and you fully intend to--but you are not quite ready yet. You found a possible location, but it does not seem perfect, and besides, you are unsure if the local marketplace conditions are right. Maybe next year would be better....

You are ready to expand your customer base--almost. However, you are certain it cannot be done without buying and mastering a particular software program that lets you personalize your marketing efforts--and, since you are not ready to do that yet, you had better hold off....

Yesterday, you met the best natural salesperson ever. Instinctively, you know she would be perfect for your team, and she hinted that she might be in the market for a job change. You would love to hire her, but the time does not seem right to hire a new person--money is tight and you are far too busy to go through the hiring and training process right now.

These hypothetical owners may think they are just avoiding unnecessary risk, but if you read the scenarios again--and if you are honest with yourself--you will have to admit their reasons reek of excuse making. However, here is the real problem: risk avoiders also are opportunity missers.

When you are in charge of running a company, it is easy to convince yourself that playing it safe is the responsible choice. Especially if your business is new, going out on a limb is the last thing you want to do, but risk is needed if you want to do more than merely scrape by--and it may be needed just to survive in this economy.

Hoping that sales will get better or that conditions will improve is a wimpy approach. You cannot wait for everything to be perfect because it never will be. You have to take action--in other words, accept risk and make those things happen.

Even with the best attitude and plan, there are times in every business when, as progress slows, confusion sets in. You may feel frozen and afraid that any move you make will be wrong but, if you do not want to stagnate, you have to move. I understand that this type of risk is the most difficult one to take, and that you probably want to find ways to avoid action, but that is tantamount to sinking your own ship.

Let's identify the risk avoidance that may be holding you back by highlighting 10 of its most common forms:

The timing is not right. As a young commodities broker right out of college, I remember receiving a call from a client named Steve each morning. Steve was a "prisoner of hope" who always asked the same question, "Where is gold this morning?" When gold was higher than the day before, he would comment, "Ah, missed it again." If it was trading lower, he said, "Let's wait and get it at the bottom." Steve missed the biggest increase in gold in more than 50 years because he waited...