February 11th is National “Don’t Cry Over Spilled Milk Day” and you shouldn’t be crying over spilled milk!
I remember as a child, we were just sitting down for dinner one evening at the dinner table. My dad was home, so we gathered around the kitchen table. (My dad traveled quite a bit for his job, so if he was gone, we got to go out one night and the other night we got to eat in front of the television…big treats!) I don’t remember the particular events leading up to “the event”, but, I knocked my glass of milk over…spilling it all over the table and floor. I was yelled at…by both of my parents…and told that I could ‘clean it up myself!’ As I was cleaning the milk up, all I could think was ‘it was just an accident.’
I don’t know why this childhood memory has stuck with me so strongly. Maybe I needed this lesson early in life to prepare me for owning a small business today! Small business owners are going to make mistakes. They seem to make more mistakes in their early years. The keys to overcoming your mistakes are to:
- Identify the mistakes.
- Accept that you made a mistake.
- Know what you did incorrectly and correctly.
- Use the mistake to better your business processes, your employees and yourself.
Making a mistake or having a challenge within your small business forces you to take a look at your business. Is there a way to improve an existing process? Or, is now the time to implement a process so that everyone is doing things the same way?
Making mistakes can have a negative impact on a business. So, instead of “Crying Over Spilled Milk”, look at the mistake as an opportunity to make your business more successful.
