Battling Invisible Risk

It’s one thing to manage all the obvious risks in running your business (who wants an IRS smackdown?) But what about those that are invisible until you hold them up to the light?

Jonathan and I had risk on our minds this week (listen to the episode for why) and wanted to talk about the how’s, when’s and why’s of uncovering the hidden risks in your authority business:

Understanding how bad things could go—what’s the worst that could happen and how are you protected?

Pricing your work based on the amount of risk you decide to shoulder.

Saying no to high risk, low return client requests.

The role and value of defining work processes to manage your risk exposure.

Using peers and sounding boards when you’re doing strategic, high-impact consulting.

Quotables

“What’s the right thing to do when you’re engaged in client projects, where there are risks and project failure can cost lots of money?”—JS

“How bad can things go and what’s your role in that? That’s a strategic business operational question that we all have to ask ourselves.”—RM

“If you…take these hidden risks and make them visible, you can price based on that.”—JS

“Most of us who go into our own businesses, we don’t like the word discipline…but there’s a certain amount of discipline in running a business.”—RM

“E+O insurance, that was my net. Like I could walk the high wire with confidence, knowing that if things went as bad as possible, I wouldn’t be in the street. My family wouldn’t be in this.”—JS

“If what you’re doing is more of a strategic thing, you really want to have a sounding board or two that you can use when you uncover an unusual client situation.”—RM

“Knowing that a second pair of eyes will be reviewing your work is a very interesting little kind of safety valve.”—JS

“We had peers excited about the work that we were doing, trying to figure out how to make it great for the client.”—RM