The other day, I learned a lesson about owning and operating my own business. Fortunately, the lesson that I learned was not very physically, emotionally, or economically painful. It was, however, quite wet.
Two weeks ago, I arrived at my Wednesday farmers’ market and set up my booth as usual. My booth consists of a sun/rain canopy with a table underneath it. Business was slow for the first hour or so, and I was making the most of the idle time by playing with my son. It was the first time that I had let him sit directly on the grass without a blanket and he was pulling it up by the handful, squealing with delight. To my surprise and delight, he was not as much interested in trying to eat the grass as he was in pulling it up.
I was so busy playing that I did not really notice that the sky was darkening overhead. Rain began to fall, softly at first. I checked my plates of cookies, cupcakes, and brownies to make sure that the plastic wrap was covering them so that they would not get wet. The rain began to fall harder, and the wind began to blow it into the tent sideways from all directions. The plastic wrap on my goodies was no match for this storm and everything got soaked.
As I stood there talking with a neighboring vendor about whether we should wait around for the weather to clear up, a rumble of thunder made my decision for me. I quickly strapped the baby into his car seat and took down my booth as fast as I could. It only took me a couple of minutes to load everything into the car, but I was dripping wet.
Later that evening, as I was thinking about the day’s events, it occurred to me that I could easily have avoided getting wet if I had simply checked the forecast the day before. If I had checked the forecast, I would have seen that severe thunderstorms were predicted for the exact time of day that I would be at the farmers’ market. Armed with that information, I could have made an informed decision not to do the market that day. Not only would I have avoided getting wet, I would have avoided baking all of that delicious stuff that ended up coming back home with me. Oh, and if I had not baked all of it I would have avoided eating it because even after it got wet, it was still chocolate. Delicious chocolate.
The lesson that I learned from the wet cupcake incident is that when you run your own business, you are in charge of risk management. Every business has some degree of risk associated with it, and you are responsible for learning what those risks are and for implementing a plan for managing them. This week, my simple risk management strategy of checking the forecast saved me from another wet Wednesday market and freed up my Tuesday evening because I did not have to bake.
How do you manage the risks associated with your business?