Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst

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It’s an entrepreneur’s naive optimism that leads to worries about problems that don’t yet exist. The funny thing is that entrepreneurs usually worry about upside problems. But what about the downside? You have to hope for the best, and plan for the worst. It’s okay to think about scaling up, but also be prepared to scale down. How quickly can you reduce your overhead if the orders aren’t coming in as quickly as you planned? What happens if your biggest customer switches, and you lose 50 percent of your revenue? Are you able to adjust your business until you find a replacement? Make sure you create an elastic organization that can scale down as well as it can scale up. Dream big, but keep your feet planted firmly on the ground.

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