How To Use A Premise To Guide Your Business

“All of our suffering in life is from saying we want one thing and doing another.” —Debbie Ford

A premise is an assumption that something is true. This assumption leads people to an inevitable conclusion.

For example, if you find someone you don’t know climbing in the window of your house, you call 911 without hesitation. In that scenario, the premise is “someone is breaking into my house to steal from me, and I must stop them.” If the premise were “that person in my window must really need to use the bathroom,” you’d probably rush to let them in instead of calling for backup.

Our Cultural Premises

Without realizing it, we built our lives on a few fundamental premises. These core assumptions form the container from which we lead our lives and usually come from our culture, communities, and families. In American culture, a few of our core premises include:

• Each person is unique with special gifts and talents
• All men are created equal and should be treated equally
• Nothing is impossible; if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything
• We have a right to be prosperous and should be making lots of money
• It’s essential to be productive and get things done
• Career success leads to life success
• Treat everyone with dignity and respect
• Don’t forget to give back

The Disconnect Between Our Beliefs And Actions

Although most people live their lives with these core assumptions, there is a disconnect between what we say we believe and what we do. This disconnect is the root of our suffering.

Even though we say that “all men are created equal,” we don’t treat people that way. The truth of American life is that your trajectory can be changed entirely based on your race, sex, or class. This is true no matter how hard you work or how good you are to other people.

Premise and Entrepreneurship

When you become an entrepreneur, the fundamental premises of business smack you in the face, hard. When your first start out, you run your business based on these assumptions because you want to be successful. So you do what everyone else is doing and hope that it works.

However, you quickly realize that running a business like this isn’t sustainable. If you keep hustling to implement the latest and greatest industry hack, you’ll never enjoy the freedom that you hoped your business would create in the first place. You must consciously choose your core business assumptions and let your company development from that place. Then, you’ll find alignment between your business and you.

As an example, here are a few of the updated premises from my business:

Premise #1: All Businesses Aren’t Out To Scam Me

I used to think that every small business owner was a scam artist who just wanted to waste my time. Now that I am one of those owners, I realize that most of us are just good people selling products or services to help people. Now that I know this, I no longer interact with other service providers as if they are out to get me. Instead, I choose to really listen. By doing this, I have developed great relationships and found services that really did change my life.

Premise #2: Cut People Some Slack

When I was suffering from depression, one of the hardest things to cope with was disappointing people especially customers and business partners. But during that period, I did.

I didn’t return emails and phone calls. I missed deadlines. I made promises to work on projects that I never completed. I dropped the ball so hard that the ball bounced back up, and I dropped it again.

The shame of having to admit my mistakes and fear of being judged as one of “those black businesses” overwhelmed me. But I decided to be honest with people about my failings and deal with the consequences anyway.

And do you know what happened? Most of my customers and business partners cut me some slack. Of course, I lost some customers and partners, but most stuck it out with me. They were more understanding of my business failings than I had ever been with other people, and I decided to pay it forward. Now I’m a much more understanding and gracious business owner because of that experience.

Premise #3: Take Action Fast

I use to ruminate about an idea for months before actually doing anything about it (if I ever did.) Now I know that you can’t figure out the efficacy of an idea that way. You have to get in the game and take action. It’s the only way to know what works and what doesn’t.

So now I get in gear a lot faster. If I have an actionable business idea, I create a plan around it, limit my research and ruminations, and get to it. I try out the idea. The quicker I do, the faster I’ll know whether to stick with it or move on to something else.

Are you running your business based on premises that you didn’t consciously choose? Let’s change that. Let me know in the comments some of the beliefs you plan to change or let go of in your business.