Risk

What is your tolerance for risk? Have you ever heard the phrase "no pain no gain?" What about "the bigger the risk the bigger the rewards?"

Some of us are risk averse. We know the devil we have we don't know the one at the bottom of the sea. So we stay in the boat. We don't come out. According to the Harvard Business Review, we who are in this particualar boat "have an aversion to risk that chokes off value-creating growth opportunities." This is probably bad from the sound of it. What do you think?

There are others among us who need to live life on the edge in order to feel alive. Look at Richard Branson. He is a risk-taking dare devil. Maybe he's even slightly crazy. He jumps out of parachutes, sails across oceans alone, swims from one island in the Caribbean to the other, tries business ideas that makes other people blanche. Now he has a vision. He wants to fly people to outer space as if space is the new Mauritius or Vegas.

Needless to point out, Branson's networth is $5,000,000,000.00. He is not a small business owner. He is a big business owner. He owns record labels, airplanes, private islands, all sorts of stuff. But the irony is, he started out as a small business owner. He was not always a billionaire. It's just that he was more willing than the rest of us to take big risks.

What is your tolerance for risk? How are you with creating risk management tools to minimize different and/or potential risks? How much risk are you willing to take to have your business in the first place? Are you willing to bet the farm on your business venture? Should you? It's a fine line between risk and reckless gambling. As a small business owner, you have to be willing to take some risk. The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. The bigger the risk, the bigger the loss.

It's about leap-frogging but with a parachute. Or maybe without. Which do you prefer?