One aspect of running a small business that fascinates me (and keeps me on my toes) is the idea that the way you make money now could change overnight.

I have just finished the book The Black Swan, a complex read (for me) that adds concrete to my belief that we are fools if we think we can see into the future and accurately ‘predict’. But so many companies bury their heads in the sand waiting for things to revert naturally. Perhaps we do (of course we do) need to take a risk once in a while, even if the change is a drastic one, like Mr Wrigley.

A good example for me is my own design company in Basingstoke. When we started 12 years ago, 80% of revenue was made up of  print sales – the result of a design project. Now, it’s about 20%. And, with that, margin has eroded too.

Luckily for us it happened over a period of time so we could adjust our business model by noticing the signs of change. Other agencies didn’t and went bust. The whole design industry has changed somewhat over the past 20 years I’ve been in the game. Especially when you add into the mix more recently the ease in which people can create their own designs using automated software and clipart; or websites where you can buy a company logo for the price of an hour of standard UK agency design fees.

It’s why any small business model needs to remain lucid.

Other cases in point:

• In June, Microsoft announced that they are developing their own standard anti-virus software. What do you do if you are McAfee or Symantec?
• Twitter is full of Twitter experts, selling e-books (amongst other things) showing how small businesses can leverage Twitter. What do they do when Twitter release their own free 101 Twitter Guide For Business – as it did earlier this month?
• In retail, thousands of independent UK shop keepers have sold up, simply because they can not compete with the scale of the larger chains.

As a small business we constantly challenge our own business model and the way we interact with clients and when I remove myself from the day-to-day, and take two points in time, it’s eye opening to see how large that change has been.

Although I can’t seen into the future I know we need to take an educated guess on where the money will be made (or if it will be made). And, also remain courageous enough to take the right risks at the right time.

Business landscapes often evolve and often change for ever… ask… Woolworths, IBM, Syquest, BT. Oh yes, and the banks of course.