My dad had a bunch of sayings that drove me crazy when I was a kid, but similar to Mark Twain, I am amazed at how smart he was as I look around 30 plus years later. One of his country, Texas folk sayings was: “the opportunity of a lifetime comes around about every two weeks.” I have drawn many things from this pithy comment over the years but I am now convinced it is about balance. Not that you shouldn’t keep swinging, to misuse a baseball metaphor. Balance in this case is defined as weighing the pursuit of core business basics against risk.
Venture capitalists, angel investors and entrepreneurs today must follow or pursue their convictions with a zeal like never before. Pursuing a “hunch” or “your gut” is the riskier way of finding opportunities but only the basics of any company make up a business’ DNA; LIQUIDITY, PROFITABILITY & GROWTH should be the primary pursuits today balanced against those riskier opportunities. If your pursuits cannot predictably deliver at least one of these three things in an acceptable way (positively), then consider why you are doing them.
Nice Blog..... agree on the business focus, just remember that the mantra of 'Liquidity, Profitability and Growth have critical corollaries - They MUST be pursued strictly in the order stated, one MUST follow another, or surely the enterprise will fail. Liquidity that fails to produce profitability fails ultimately, as a liquidity crisis will ultimately arise, and failure to grow will ultimately create a profitability crisis, which will end in a liquidity crisis. Been there, it gets ugly.
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