Business Inertia

I am amazed at how many small business owners do not continue to invest in their businesses. They are content (sometimes a good thing) and assume that the business will stay the same. Unfortunately, like the physical world, momentum slows. With objects, their speed and acceleration changes due to friction and other forces acting on them (thus, there is not a perpetual motion machine). In business, those other forces that slow us down are called competition, economic cycles, customer apathy, etc.

If we want to maintain our business positions and maintain any momentum, we have to continue to invest some form of energy into the 'motion' of the business. That energy can be customer-focused improvements, marketing efforts, acquisitions, cost reductions, creating competitive advantages, improving your levels of collaboration, empowerment and alignment within your organization. It takes some investment, or you won't learn the lesson Alice did in Wonderland that you have to run faster just to stay in place.