Walking into an Elephant

bydavebux

2.3K followers

3 months ago

Somebody told me today that a man walked into an elephant.

There was a moments silence, then …

Why would anybody want to walk into an elephant Ma. Everybody knows that elephants are big animals and they will tell you that if you walk into an elephant then you will not win.

Perhaps they had their eyes shut.

Don’t be silly Ma, nobody walks about with their eyes shut.

This is a little excerpt from a novel that I read some time ago, that I’ve translated into English, and it made me think deeply about how I and others approach our business lives.

Who would want to walk into an elephant, Nobody is the answer, but let’s define what sort of elephant is in my head.

Think of the elephant as any obstacle in your life, or some impending deadline that must be met, some impending doom. Don’t we all have obstacles.

And I’m thinking now of a couple of retail operations in my neighborhood that have struggled to make it quite recently.

There was a new delicatessen and cafe that opened, just along the High Street and where I live there are currently 20 plus cafes all within a 100 metre circle. We must consume a lot of cakes and coffee here in the South of England.

Some cafes are perpetually busy, and there is one in particular where there is always a queue from opening until closing and they do a roaring take-away trade too. They open seven days a week from 8am to 6pm most days.

On the opposite side of the road was the new Deli. Granted it was a smaller operation and they believed that if they just opened a cafe opposite a busy and successful one then they would be successful too, that was their business plan.

No, no, no, no, no. It doesn’t work like that. There was no character to the new cafe, there was no comfy seating, there was no regular clientele, there was a world of difference.

I’m getting to the elephant bit now – closing down. When they started out, they opened from 9am to 5pm. But the planned flood of customers from one cafe to the other never happened. They had very few customers throughout the day and decided to open at 10am to save staff costs. Then they closed at 4pm, then it was 3pm.

The cafe is in a tourist hot spot, so their next move was to close on Sundays, then it became Sunday and Monday, and closing just after lunchtime on Saturdays.

Here was this great big elephant called bankruptcy, staring them in the face and they were doing all the wrong things to avert it, in fact, they were walking straight into the elephant with their eyes closed. After just six months, the inevitable happened.

Roll forward 3 months and new people took on the lease and decided to keep the premises as a Deli. After all, it was already kitted out to be a cafe.

They opened 9 to 5 six days a week, but still with a limited number of customers. I vaguely know the owner and she said she didn’t like working Sundays and anyway, if she opened she may not get many people coming in.

I could sense another elephant moment coming again. Why not try opening on Sundays and see what happens.

That was six months ago, and the cafe struggled on.

A couple of weeks ago, the town held a major food festival, with an estimated 20 to 25 thousand visitors attending. That is double the towns population, if you can’t make money at this event then its time to go home.

You will be opening Sunday, I asked. No, not at all, I don’t work Sundays.

You’re walking into an elephant I said.

A what. - And I explained about the elephant.

Imagine my surprise on Sunday when I walked along the High Street, The Deli was open and doing a good trade, perhaps they have turned a mental corner.

And the point of all this. When times are tough and little progress is made and very few successes are evident, don’t pull away from your business. That is the time to increase your activities, the time to be more creative, the time to think laterally.

Ask yourself - What else can I do to make things happen.

Tell yourself - Now is the time to do things.

I’ve seen too many people over the years that have great business ideas, impressive dreams and lots of initial motivation. Then, when it comes to the effort of making the business work, they do less, because things aren’t working. They are walking straight into the elephant. And do you know what they do – they start a new business and walk into another elephant, as regular as clockwork.

There is that famous saying (and a song I believe), When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Be tough, eyes open wide and build your business.

Toodle pip

Bux