As much as we’d love business to be about profits and perhaps doing what we love, there are also risks to running a business and ignoring those risks can lead to all sorts of problems. Acknowledging risks, however may mean yu can reduce the likelihood of them occurring and allow you to plan ahead to make dealing with a risk easier.

Here are some risks you may want to look at for your business:

• investigate anyone you are doing large transactions with – you can do a credit check, check if they have civil claims against them, ask for bank references, and so on
• security offered by your web host
• insurance for physical issues (fire, flood, theft), professional indemnity, customer and staff safety, your income (income protection or salary continuance cover), delivery coverage, and so on
• losing information (computer problems, ‘the dog ate it’, misplacing a file or phone, etc)
• intellectual property (protect it with a trademark, limiting access to it and keeping records)
• fire, flood and other natural or man made disasters
• failure of suppliers to meet deadlines
• fraud
• human error (reduced by automating some tasks and having written procedures for others)
• being under resourced (eg key staff being sick, sudden influx of orders you can’t handle, insufficient cashflow to purchase raw materials)
• paying for marketing that provides little return or value

What other risks have you faced in your business? Were you able to plan ahead for them?

The background is that Kylie started a VA business from home a few years ago. As things were going so well, she moved into an office earlier this year – a big step for her and an exciting one! After nearly 6 months, Kylie has decided to close the office and operate from home again.

 Kylie took a risk and left her comfort zone by moving into an office. In doing so, she was able to change her work habits (no more midnight work) and define work and family better.

What I found inspiring about this is that Kylie has realised she is better suited to work from her home office, and has set up her business so that doing so is still feasible. Instead of just accepting the office as what she ‘should’ do as a successful business or worrying that moving out after 6 months is a ‘failure’, Kylie is doing what is right for her.

So often people let themselves get stuck into a rut because they think it is expected of them or don’t want to admit a previous decision was wrong. But why not admit a decision wasn’t right, but was worth trying?

As Kylie said “If I didn’t, I would have wondered if moving out was the right thing to do and I wouldn’t have developed my good habits so I don’t regret it at all. Life is a series of learning experiences and this was another one of those.”

Taking a risk doesn’t mean closing off options – it just means giving something new a go and then deciding what to do with the new knowledge and skills you gain from the experience.

Have you ever taken a risk and then decided to go back to how something used to be?