Bruce’s Wealth Blog

I was speaking to a dear friend of mine the other day and she made a comment that I thought was important to discuss.  She is a business owner.  As a business owner you are by definition a leader.  Even if you have no employees, you are a leader.  The purpose of your business is to earn a profit by providing a service or product to customers or clients.  Those customers or clients look to you as the business owner to provide them with what they need.  Therefore, as the provider you are a leader.

The comment she made was, "Leaders don’t make mistakes."  As I thought more and more about this comment, I realized that her view is probably held by the majority of other people in the world.  This should go down as one of the biggest urban myths of our time.  The truth is actually the opposite of what is perceived.  Leaders actually make more mistakes than anyone else.  What separates leaders from everyone else is in this regard is that their risk tolerance is also greater than non-leaders.

A leader absolutely must be a decision maker.  If the leader is not willing to make decisions, his company will stagnate and eventually collapse.  Actually, choosing not to make a decision is just as much a decision as making the decision, but we will not get into that here.  Leaders are charged with making decisions others don’t want to make.  How many times have you gone into a business only to be told that the employee cannot make that decision, that only a manager can and the manager is out of town on business?  Let’s face it, most people don’t like making decisions even though we make thousands of decisions every day.  Some people experience great anxiety when they are faced with making a decision.  They get that terrified deer in the headlights look every time they are faced with a decision.  The anxiety we all feel when faced with a decision comes from our fear of being wrong.  What if we make the wrong decision?

Bruce’s Decision Rule:

"You will make bad or wrong decisions in your life."

This is just a fact.  Leaders understand this fact and are willing to tolerate the risk of being in a position to make decisions.  The only reason we don’t know they make mistakes is because they are making timely decisions to correct the mistakes they make.  As an employee you will probably never see the mistakes a leader makes.  Even if a leader personally comes to you and apologizes to you because they made a mistake, you will go about your day and will at the end of the day still make the statement that leaders don’t make mistakes.  Since leaders are making more decisions, they make more mistakes.

There is one more point I have to make before I close this post out.  If you are afraid to start your business because you are afraid you will make a mistake, let me leave you with these thoughts.  First, you will make mistakes.  You are not perfect, no one is.  Regardless of how much information you have, how educated you are, or how smart you are, you will make mistakes.  No amount of information will keep you from making mistakes.  The second is that your choice not to start your business because of your fear of making mistakes is a mistake in and of itself.

Bruce..