Learning to run a business by trial and error

It’s a phrase I’ve uttered often since I left the gentle, rolling hills of Boiling Springs and the relative safety of Gardner-Webb University.

“I should have minored in business.”

I know quite a bit about what I majored in, which was communication studies. I was a cross-platform media guy long before it was trendy. But, while I enjoyed reading Keats and minoring in English, taking some business classes would have come in handy for this little magazine my wife and I are trying to run.

Running a business is hard. I’ve never worked harder for less money. Yet, despite the help we’ve had along the way from the small business center and fellow business owners, the main method we’ve used for learning how to operate a small business is trial and error.

We’ve tried to keep the mistakes small and learn a little something from each of them. I think the biggest truth I’ve learned in this journey is about planning. You can either make a plan for the way things are now or design a course of action that will cover where you’d like the business to be down the road.

I could write an entirely different column about the futility of trying to plan for the future, but I try to make decisions for JNOW that will not only help us today but make us a better company six months from now.

I guess Keats would say, “Don’t be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success.”

Maybe I did pick up a little bit of business in my poetry classes.