cre8Buzz Blog

Risk, what is your risk analysis process? How do ya assess risk? How do ya determine how far you go, how much risk you take on? Are you conservative and a plodder or a risk taker and mad aggressive? Think about it. This is one of the greatest differentiators out there. We spend stupid time looking at business models, business plans, evaluating ideas, assessing options, identifying talent, but making the decisions is where it all comes together and if ya don’t have a risk assessment tool, a way that you can get the most out of all your decisions your throwing mad money out the window or worse yet, ya leavin’ good money on the table for someone else.

The first question ya need to ask is; how do ya define risk. How do you look at risk? Risk is not objective, let me be clear. It is not black and white. It is subjective; ya got some room to get more out of your risk assessment. Think about it. What is risky to one cat, ain’t no thing to another. I look at risk like this: “It ain’t risky if ya confident.” Check it, here is another way of looking at risk. It is all about fear management. Risk is crazy impacted by fear. Fear is the main ingredient in risk. If ya livin’ life in fear, everything is risky. If your afraid your competition could catch you, your gonna be afraid to venture into new products and services because you’ll be afraid if you fail they will catch you for sure. So what do ya do, ya spend more time and money doing what you always did hopin’ they won’t catch ya. Rememba that phrase, “No one ever got fired for hiring IBM”, ya know why they said it dontcha? Why take the risk on picking a better company that no one has ever heard of. Why put your ass out there and take a chance, just go with safe decision and ya can’t loose. Well, yeah, ya can and ya will.

Think about those decisions that scared ya the most. How comfortable were you in that environment? How much did ya know about the decision? How prepared were you for the outcome? What were you focused on? Were you focused on what happened if you failed or what happened if it were successful? Why did ya go the direction ya went?

To get more out of your decisions, ya gotta start thinking about how ya make decisions.

A few ways to limit the PERCEPTION of risk:

1. Get more information – rememba ya’ll the lack of information will absolutely make every decision APPEAR more risky. LACK OF INFORMATION IGNITES THE FEAR!

2. Ask; what are you afraid of and why. Can you mitigate those fears? Are ya playin to win or not to lose and why? What is causing the fear?

3. Ask; why aren’t you confident? What are you missing that is causing the lack of confidence?

4. Are you over confident? Are you trying to over compensate for something? Are you trying to avoid a nagging feeling?

5. Step back, get the emotion out of it.

6. Let it rip! Ya gotta make the call, so make it and see where it goes.

A little FYI; 80% of people worth 5 million dollars (pentamillionaires) started their own business or worked for a small start-up that saw explosive growth. Hmmm, I guess, makin’ bank means takin’ risk. What are you doin’?

Do ya got what it takes to get more out of ya decisions or are ya lookin’ to take the safe route and hopin’ to get lucky?

Only you will know my friend, only you will know!