Prospecting. For clients and for opportunities.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

image: notonthehighstreet.com

Most of us are loss averse. We don't mind trying over and over again, practicing till we are perfect and following the no pain no gain mantra, as long as the loss isn't a financial one. We don't readily throw our money at speculative ventures and it's the main reason most of our companies don't have R&D departments. We would rather leave that financially expensive and uncertain part to foreign companies, then copy whatever successful invention they generate.

It's for a solid reason that investment managers recommend that you have a healthy mix of low risk investment, medium risk investment and a little speculative investment. You shouldn't put all your money in one investment vehicle or class. Not only to avoid being wiped out when something catastrophic happens to that class of investment but also so you are positioned to discover the next 10 bagger (the investment that will get you 10 fold returns).

I am currently building a Balanced Scorecard Dashboard for a big IT firm. In my pitching proposal, I had to prove my knowledge and explain the value of having a Balanced Scorecard. A big established business will generally have three categories of business units: the ones generating most of the company's revenue but it's in a mature or dying lifecycle stage; the ones with huge potential for growth but it's in introductory or early growth stage; and the ones that are based on R&D ideas with possibility of becoming a big win or a no-winner. Every company's continued success depends on managing well all these three types of business units. If you place too much attention on the cash cow, the business units generating most of your revenue though they are at the end of their product lifecycle, you will be setting yourself up for future irrelevance. If you don't nurture the business units with huge potential for growth or put a manager who is not willing to approve expenses for projects with no immediate payback, you will kill your future cash cow. And if you don't give the R&D ideas based business units a chance at all, you won't be innovative and outbrain your competition.

And it's like that with our lives too. You can't keep restricting yourself to what you are used to.