The bright light of the stars that you see in the night sky are deceiving, because what you are looking at might not even be there anymore. Sounds strange, I know, but it’s true. You see, light travels through space at the speed of… well… light. Which is really fast. But some of those stars in the sky are so far away that it takes years for their light to reach earth. In fact, in some cases it takes thousands of years for the light to reach us. To give you some perspective on this, it takes 8 seconds for the light from the sun to reach earth, so if the sun just disappeared, we wouldn’t find out till 8 seconds later.
So what does that mean? It means that the star you are looking at tonight in the sky might no longer be there because it died out years ago while its light was traveling to us.
And yes, I think about these things in terms of small businesses. There are alot of things I could say about this but I guess the thing that comes to mind first is that the choices you are making right now in your business will have lasting effects, in some cases, for years to come.
Who do you hire? Who do you fire? Do you expand that product line? Do you sink more money and time into social media and internet marketing? Do you do this, or do that? I have worked for several small businesses in my career, and the choices are not easy, I know. One big mistake and it could be very costly. So my advice to you is to spend some time thinking about the long-lasting effects of the decisions that you contemplate. Do you really need to make this decision? Are there more things that could go wrong than go right? Do the pros outweigh the cons?
The bottom line is that even if you closed the doors today, some of the choices you made in your business will last for a time. So choose wisely. Because it won’t take a million light years for everyone to see it!