Welcome back to the Scale Your Small Business Podcast with your host, Jillian Flodstrom. Today’s guest is Matt Davis, author of The Art of Preventing Stupid, speaker, and attorney. Matt believes we should protect, improve, and grow through smart business decisions and shows struggling entrepreneurs how to weed out the stupid mistakes they’re making so they can move forward.
Matt has been practicing law for over 20 years. In his time, he’s realized that legal issues are a symptom of an underlying issue. He did a full-tilt assessment with his growing firm of 25 employees and reverse engineered mistakes their clients made. We’re taught to deal with issues after they happen. Matt has a different, preventative approach, similar to what his mother did in medicine. He developed a system that allows business owners to look at their work and know what to watch out for.
The most common issue Matt has seen in practicing law is people getting into unnecessary business partnerships that typically end in nasty business divorces. Those can be expensive and business-killing.
It’s important to look at your systemic internal and external vulnerabilities. Internally, there are you, your associates, and your employees. Externally, there are your customers, your vendors, and your competition. You have to brainstorm all possibilities of what could go wrong in each of these areas. Different sizes of businesses in different phases of scaling will face different challenges.
You’re either in the opportunity zone or the problem pit. It’s an A or B choice. Growth is about staying in the opportunity zone and minimizing when you’re in the pit. When you deal with your vulnerabilities, you position yourself to capitalize on opportunities. It’s very hard to find opportunities when you’re preoccupied with problems.
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