Are you a business woman who is feeling desperate during the economical crunch?  Are your funds limiting your business choices?  Is business down?  Are you doing the same thing but expecting different results?

Oftentimes, when times get desperate, we feel desperate. We think that desperate times call for desperate measures because this is what we’ve always been told.  This is a negative and stressful cliché.  If we feel desperate, we become desperate.  If we become depressed, we become non-functional.  Alleviate your stress and get creative.

I believe that desperate times call for creative thinking.  It is important to keep your mind moving forward one day at a time.  Don’t think of a month from now or two months from now, just handle what you can handle today.  Make a to-do list, and put the worst task you have to handle at the top of the list — do it first! 

Once your most dreaded task it out of the way, you can breathe and handle the rest of your day with ease.  If you don’t tackle the dreaded task first, it will haunt your mind all day long.  By the end of the day, you will move it to the list you make for the next day, and eventually you will lose sleep over it. 

Because you are a business woman, you have already taken a risk.  You took a risk to go into business for yourself.  Your friends and family might have even said, “you’re crazy, it’ll never work”, but you did it anyway. You took the first step towards your dream. 

The other day, a prominent dentist I know told me what his in-laws said when he opened a dental practice fresh out of dental school.   They told him that he shouldn’t do it and he would fail.  It was his dream and he did it anyway.  He completely paid off his dental practice in four months, has been in business for thirty years, and is very successful.  He continued to tell me that if he failed today, his in-laws would still say, “I told you that you would fail!” 

Do you still believe in yourself?  Do you believe that your business is viable?  If you answer yes to these questions and want to ride out the economical waves then ask yourself, “what else have I learned from being in business?” List them on a piece of paper, and put your alternative talents to use to generate income and keep your mind active.  Meet knew people in different professions, attend seminars, and think outside the box. 

I am creating additional revenue outside the scope of our business while we wait for economical recovery.   I first streamlined our business so we can offer our business licenses for sale online. We don’t need a facility, we don’t need equipment or supplies, and we can fluctuate with the economy as much as we need to. 

Once this was complete, I wrote down everything that I have learned over the years and took a good look at what services I could offer others.  I was actually amazed at how much I really do have to contribute to the business world!

I started networking, going to seminars, being invited to speak to groups, and am now starting to build web-pages, develop training courses for companies, develop business plans and profit projections for women wanting to go into business. I am helping future entrepreneurs build their infrastructure for a fraction of the cost that CPA’s, Attorneys, and large web design companies charge while keeping myself in forward motion.

The services that I now offer will help new people who want to go into business for themselves.  I offer creative suggestions and get them thinking of additional ways to generate their own income until they have a revenue stream.  Diversifying is important! 

Once you put a new plan into motion, you tap into an entirely different array of people.  We all learn something from one another.  It doesn’t matter what type of business they own, it matters that we all face similar experiences being self employed.  Some people have great solutions to our problems, but if we never meet them then we will never have other opinions to ponder. It is important to stay involved and not be alone. 

I believe in having a Plan B ready both in life and in business.  If plan B is ready and I tap into it then I start creating plan C.  Creative business minds are what drive this country, and creative female minds can travel unlimited miles, go in different directions, and multi-solve. 

Women have been multi-tasking for years.  We juggle family, school, daycare, house cleaning, and business.  Whether we are homemakers, work at home, work for someone, or are self-employed, we multi-task.  Business is no different. We must multi-task, multi-solve, and multi-create.  

If your business is struggling and you are planning for its recovery then you need to ask yourself, “What is my plan B?”  “What is my plan C?”    Put on your thinking cap.  Dig deep within yourself.  Find your hidden talents, and capitalize on them.

I was once involved with an organization that liked to hold sporadic “company overviews”.

Every once in a while we would get a chipper email from the CEO’s secretary inviting us to one of these (mandatory) meetings, promising that “big announcements” were going to be made and that we should expect “exciting changes” in the upcoming months.

We would be herded into the biggest boardroom and for nearly half the day the VPs would plow us with glossy paper handouts and fancy PowerPoint presentations.  They’d congratulate us on our great work, go over the company numbers (which were always in the green), and emphasize that the company was doing better than ever.

These meetings would always elicit fear among my co-workers.

As much as some managers would like to believe otherwise employees are not stupid and it didn’t take long for people to realize that our company overviews were curiously timed to coincide with dips in the stock market, a round of pink slips, or a change in management.

People would whisper and gossip for weeks after an overview.  The happier upper management was the more miserable the underlings became.  This wasn’t healthy for anyone and it created a high-stress, fear-based environment that eventually brought down the entire company.

We live in a society that promotes personal growth.  The self-help industry, for example, generates more than 9.6 billion dollars a year and TV programs like The Oprah Winfrey Show and Dr. Phil constantly challenge us to “let our light shine” and “take control of our lives”.

Many of us are looking for something, that’s for sure.  We’re over-worked, under-slept, and insecure and we don’t seem to understand the source of our discontent.  While work isn’t the only thing that can bring a person down, continually reporting to a boss who overlooks your intellect and takes advantage of your fears is never good for the self-esteem.

If you don’t demand honesty in your professional life, how can you demand it in your personal life?

Building your career upon the foundation of honesty, respect, and open communication -and demanding these attributes from your employer – will guarantee your professional and personal success.  Accepting a hostile and deceptive work environment will damage your self-worth and kill your career before it ever has a chance to grow.

Most of us can’t pick and choose our co-workers.  We can, however, pick and choose the organizations we decide to work for.  It always pays to research a company, and the corporate culture of that company, before deciding to work for it.  A few fibs from upper management might not seem like much in the beginning, but they can snowball rather quickly.

We all know what’s going on in today’s world.  Economic crises don’t happen on their own and they don’t tend to happen when everyone is honest and plays by the rules.

Dishonesty has brought down its fair share of companies and careers.  Don’t let it bring you down, too.

You’re worth far more than that.

Post by Kristy Straka, contributing Women On Business writer

My name is Kristy Straka.  I am 52 years old and have been in business for over 25 years. 

When I was 13 years old, I started fulltime volunteer work in a hospital in Omaha, NE.  I was adopted by nursing students who took me into surgery, taught me how to operate xray equipment, worked side by side in the ER and grew to love the medical field.  In 1975, I married and started nursing school in 1979.  However, our family started sooner than expected and since I was going to be a stay at home mom, I did not finish.

In 1983, I became interested in the landscaping business and learned how to run crews, work with builders and homeowners, and layout designs.  In 1985, I opened a unique and successful landscaping company.  I was performance driven and being quite the perfectionist, our landscapes were beautiful.

In 1989, we sold our landscaping business and a second husband and three children later, we moved to Colorado Springs, CO from Omaha, NE to enjoy the area we most liked to vacation.   My husband started in the insurance business, I went to USC to study physics and communications.  I took a break from school and worked with my husband to develop a successful insurance business.  However, we became advocates for our 3,000 clients, analyzed all of their insurance claims, and held the insurance companies responsible for paying claims they did not want to pay.  I worked with the State of CO to uncover insurance fraud within a well-known insurance company.   During this time, I assisted virgin companies develop effective Human Resource Departments, write training manuals, put on training seminars, and assisted medical doctors and dentists in getting their claims paid by insurance companies. 

In 2001, my husband took over the insurance company, and I traveled six days a week consulting dental practice employees and dentists on how to operate their business efficiently.  I trained office software, put on group seminars, trained clinical software and taught dental employees how to operate new digital equipment that was entering the dental industry.  I taught them how to get their insurance companies to pay their claims, I  audited dental practice books, uncovered inner office fraud, hired and fired employees for dentists and became well known in the industry.

In 2003, our family decided to build a business that had never been done before.  We decided to put CEREC machines into mobile vehicles and service dentists on one hour permanent crowns, inlays, onlays, and veneers with the plan to franchise the company.  Since no one had ever done this before, we committed five years to development and implementation of the business.  During this time,  I worked closely with business attorneys, accountants, multi-billion dollar dental companies, and business consultants to draft a strong business plan, five year profit projections and build the infrastructure of the business from the inside out.  I found investors to invest in a high risk one-of-a-kind business, did investor presentations and collected almost $1M to start the business.

Over the five years, I have modified the business plans, projections, expanded the business to include digital training at the doctorate level, opened a mobile dental lab fabrication company, purchased a full service dental lab, operated the mobile dental labs, and helped build a technical support system via the internet for the CEREC.  

A couple of years ago, we started selling business licenses to people who wanted to become certified digital CEREC technicians and operate their own mobile lab.  To date, we have licensees operating in New York, Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, and in the UK.
Although the mobile digital labs operate under their own name, it is www.vorofco.com that built their business and trained them on this turn-key business.  Vorofco’s US intent is to now franchise the business.

Since the economy started suffering and people were unable to get funding, we felt the need to streamline the business and cut expenses. We sell the licenses over the internet, the training is now online, our fabricators are independent contractors, and our technical support is interactive web-based real time.  This modification to our business has helped to eliminate the need for office space, materials, equipment, supplies, rent, and expensive overhead.

Until the economy recovers and banks start lending to new business owners again, we are currently modifying our plan once again to work with international investors and move to Germany for five years and develop the European market.  Once the European market is developed, we will return to the US and take the company public which will be an entirely new experience for me.

Long bio short, I am well versed in business set-up, strategic planning, developing a virgin company, implementing marketing strategies, looking at businesses that are stagnant and creating alternative revenue streams. I develop business plans, profit projections, incorporate new businesses, provide partnership documents, am a technical writing, and research and business development is my key to helping people.  I now help people develop their infrastructure, start their business, build their web-site, and get their business off the ground.  I am a well accomplished business woman and plan to soon write a book about business development. 

Contact information:  
www.vorofco.com
kristy@vorofco.com

Five years ago, did you see this economic recession coming? Perhaps, you did to a lesser extent, but you didn’t really think it was going to be this bad, right? With that said, companies have to gain leverage and position themselves to their markets by becoming the number one choice to consumers through cost effective marketing.

However, with traditional advertising costs through the roof, companies need to find more effective ways to target their markets, specifically through online media outlets – public relations, banner advertising, SEO, blogging, and branding.

Here some low cost ways of effective advertising:

1. Research and understand the goals, values, and behaviors of your market. Once you have a thorough understanding of your market, you will know how to deliver messages effectively.

2. If you decide to hire an agency to manage your advertising, make sure you are the only account they are managing in your market. If the company manages any competitors, look elsewhere.

3. Tell your market what your USP is and why you are better than all the rest of your competition. A USP is the Unique Selling Proposition, the one element that makes your business better than everyone else’s business (superior customer service, late hours, 24 hour customer service, best prices, or highest quality).

4. Use the right places to advertise online. There is nothing worse then placing an advertisement in a food e-magazine (that has little or no relevance to your market) when you are trying to sell cosmetics, which should be placed in a fashion e-magazine or some other complementary publication.

5. Create an irresistible offer. You want to attract prospects and make them contact you immediately. Offer a discount for first time buyers; offer an introductory period, or a gift that has a high perceived value.

6. Diversify your marketing efforts. Use online advertising, blogging, social media marketing with branding and public relations to get the best results. You should also determine where your marketing dollars are generating the best ROI to prevent careless spending.

If you need assistance in marketing planning, market entry or strategic planning or your website, brochure, or any other marketing material content need to be edited, proofed, created, or re-written, please contact Kristin at kkmarquet23@yahoo.com.

The more that people walk around with crappy negative attitudes the more negative things happen. If people smile, keep their head up and KNOW tomorrow will be a better day – it actually will be. I’ve read some similar “enough with the glum” blogs of late:

“This afternoon I was at the hair salon and next to me a stylist’s client was loudly hemming and hawing about how “bad” things are getting with the economy. And honestly I’m rolling my eyes, because here is a well-dressed woman dropping over $200 on her hair color and who valet parked her Mercedes out front. “Bad” – for most of this country – means you have one less flat-screen TV. “Bad” in some other countries means you could be living every day in fear of dying through starvation, or being tortured or murdered. THAT is bad. WE don’t have it bad.Please, stop listening to “news”, whose job it is to make you feel like everything is going to hell in a hand basket. TV news is not a “public service”. It’s a business. Fear attracts ratings, and ratings sell ads. If they told you “all is well” you wouldn’t have to watch anymore. And you must NEVER forget – there is no better way to maintain complete control of your life and income than being an entrepreneur! In fact, some of the greatest fortunes have been made during historical “recessions”. (You don’t hear about THAT on the news.) The GOOD news is, there are ways you can not only maintain your revenues during these times, but make MORE money than ever!” (Online entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown publishes the award-winning ‘Highlights on Marketing & Success’ weekly ezine with 36,000+ subscribers. Subscribe at www.AlexandriaBrown.com)

“It’s getting pretty crappy out there. People are getting scared and grumpy. Your job: Stay positive. Be friendly. Smile. This will turn around. It always does. That’s why they’re called “cycles.” It sucks when you’re in the down side, but it will absolutely, definitely turn around sooner or later. People will flock to be with you (and do business with you) if you can focus on the eventual upside, and have a positive attitude. People will shun you (and your business) if you are a whiny grouch. Your job: Show your community a path back to the better place. Give people hope and they will give you the support you need to make that hope a reality.” (From http://www.damniwish.com/2008/12/your-job-is-to.html )

If as a boss you are sporting the “boy the shi-et has hit the fan” attitude and are down in the dumps your staff probably won’t want to stick around and help mop up your tears. They’ll find someone who knows they can cope with market changes. Positive energy is contagious, negative energy is boring and draining.

There are many techniques that people use to re-frame the negative into positive affirmations and with consistent practice, these methods help us to create the positive life we desire.

Controlling our negative thoughts is not an easy task. One method I suggest is the use of language. When we use positive powerful words, these words can affect our subconscious mind and help to reprogram  negative beliefs. Word choices such as “I will” instead of “I’ll try” for instance make a powerful statement of intent.

Positive self talk is an important vehicle to building self-esteem and self-confidence. Often we are more comfortable dismissing praise and putting ourselves down.  What do these negative statements do to our self-esteem? Why not practice positive self-talk instead?

Follow this routine for 30 days and I guarantee that you will begin to see the difference in your self-confidence.

1. Begin with journaling. Make daily entries about your accomplishments, big and small.
2. Answer these questions. “What makes me unique?” “What are my strengths?”  “How have these strengths helped me in the past or in my current job?”
3. Review your journal entries of recent accomplishments to connect with your talent and value.  What can you truly brag about? What do these successes say about you?
4. Create a personal “bragging” statement. Be authentic and positive. Print out the statement and keep it visible so that you can refer to it often. Recite it out loud daily. “This is me.” “This is what makes me special.”

Positive self-talk is an important component to successful self-promotion.

Practice the above mentioned routine daily for 30 days and see the difference it will make in your self-esteem and self-confidence.

Everyone needs mentors to help them grow and excel – even after they reach upper management.  Yet mentors often serve men better than women because many women regard their mentors as protective and supportive allies, while men use mentors more actively to gain visibility, promotions and choice assignments. We, as women, need to rethink our “passive” use of mentoring relationships and how we can derive more value from mentors in terms of our career advancement.

In order to maximize a mentoring relationship, you first need to think strategically about the areas in which a mentor can be most helpful to you.  Each person’s situation is unique and we all have different priorities and needs.

• Do you want help in getting ahead?
• Do you stumble over the same business issues and need advice? 
• Are you uncertain about your ability to deal with people?  
• Are you having difficulty juggling your work and family?
• Do you need advice on how to enhance your skills?
• Are you interested in joining an outside Board?
• Do you need exposure to another area of business?
• Do you want to emulate a mentor’s style?
• Do you need someone to help you navigate the politics?

All of these issues can be addressed in a mentoring relationship and you may find that different stages of your career will bring different mentoring needs.

While there are core functions a mentor should provide at all organizational levels, the emphasis will probably be different as you move upward on the corporate ladder. Generally speaking, the attributes and experience you may need from a mentor at each stage of your career are:

Early in Your Career…

You will likely need exposure to key players in the organization, advice on your business strategy, functional skills required for the future, and feedback on your personal style and communication.

What to look for in a mentor: A senior person in the organization with successful job/career experience, excellent leadership skills and an effective communication style. He or she should be accessible and known for supporting younger professionals in the company.

At the Management Level…

You will profit from gaining opportunities for growth and exposure through projects, initiatives or consideration for open positions, increased understanding of the culture of the organization, and the political skills and key relationships required to advance.

What to look for in a mentor: A senior executive who is supportive of other key managers, well-respected in the company, gives others the opportunity to learn, and is known to be politically astute.

When you Become an Officer…

Information about what is really going on in the company is key, as well as visibility at the top of the organization, and help with style issues which may be interfering with your success.

What to look for in a mentor:  A senior executive who champions people, has the ear of the top guns, will be direct and honest, and manages an important strategic business area.

When you reach Executive Level…

You will need high-level support, good peer relationships, on the same wavelength as the CEO, and aware of your successes and accomplishments.

What to look for in a mentor: A senior decision-maker close to the CEO and the mission of the organization who is approachable and has a history of supporting the careers of his or her key executives.

– From Breaking Into the Boys’ Club 2009

Understanding the issues you need help with and finding the right mentor – male or female – can give your career a huge boost.  Have you had a great mentoring experience you’d like to share?

We learn at a very early age about winning and losing.  It starts on the 4-square or dodge-ball courts.  There has to be a winner; and ultimately a loser.  You hear preachers speak of “winning souls;” on the news we’ve become immune to the phrase “winning the war on terror,” in politics we often hear, “may the best man win,” and sometimes you’ll even quip, “what really matters is how you play the game.”  Yeah right!

Is winning only what happens when someone else loses?

I attended a seminar in 1997 where the facilitator asked the question, “does someone have to win in order for them to be right?”  This got everyone thinking.  Then he asked, “if someone has to get hurt for you to be right, is it worth it?”  Sadly, it was a split response from the crowd.  He then drilled a little deeper to ask, “could you go through life being right, without forcing someone to acknowledge that fact?”  It took a while, but again a split audience.  Then he concluded, “what do you stand to gain by making someone else wrong?”  The answers ranged from ego to power to satisfaction and then everyone, as if simultaneously enlightened, seemed to “get it” …winning isn’t everything.  And to quote Road House, one of my favorite cliché movies chock full of corny lines, “nobody ever wins a fight.” But how true that is in life and in business.

Society has taught us that being right is most important, but I’ve recently tried (and failed and tried yet again) an exercise in not making people wrong so that I can be right.  I call it an exercise, but really, it’s an ongoing work-in-process because I forget, I get self-righteous then I begin again.

I first started by trying to catch myself sooner in the digression.  Then I began counting to 10 before I opened my trap…it helped, but the urge was still there…it still is.  One of the antonyms of winning is the word unattractive…which is exactly how I have to picture myself: making someone admit that I am right and they are wrong is not a pretty sight.

One day I hope to be rid of my need for superiority and righteousness, but until then I’ll just keep practicing.  Until I get it mastered, I’m adding a constant question to my vernacular; “who wins by me being right?”

Names matter … especially when it comes to your online business.

High atop her balcony, the love-struck Juliet laments her lover’s problematic surname, declaring, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” While technically she’s right, you wouldn’t want to put Juliet in charge of your online branding efforts.

In fact, when it comes to your online business, choosing a domain name is the first big step — and truly the most critical — in securing your brand and growing your business. So what separates the good, the bad, and the ugly? Let’s take a look.

Five Tips for Choosing the Right Domain Name

TIP #1: Choose a name that attracts type-in traffic.

How can the right domain name help you increase sales? Well, say I own a pizza place in Peabody, Mass. If someone in Peabody is looking for a pizza place, what’s he going to do? Probably type Easton + Pizza into Google, right? And guess what? If I own the URL peabodypizza.com — even if that’s not the official name of my pizza shop — I’ll come up first in the search results. That’s because most search engines give priority to domains that contain the search criteria in their name (to increase your traffic even more, see tip #5).

The most effective way to ensure that you get plenty of type-in traffic is to choose a name that combines your service or product with your geography. For example, ConcordFlowers.com for a flower shop in Concord or LynnDogGrooming.com for a dog-grooming place in Lynn. You get the idea.

Now, you might pay a higher price for these keyword domain names, but it’s a smart move. Names like these promote this “type-in traffic” and prevent you from having to rely on search engine advertising or other potentially expensive branding campaigns. This makes them a huge bargain in the long run, and even the short run! 

TIP #2: Keep it short and easy to remember, and ditch the hyphens. 

Number two is pretty straightforward: keep your name as short as possible. For example, WalthamLandscaping.com is long enough without becoming WalthamLandscapingCompany.com, even if Waltham Landscaping Company is your official name. Even worse is Waltham-Landscaping-Company.com.

Of course, this is just a best-case scenario, and sometimes a hyphen or period is necessary. For example, say you run a jam company called Mad Hatter and there is a hat company with the same name. Well, since they clearly aren’t a competitor, you aren’t going to get into legal trouble by having the same name, but it does present a problem since they own MadHatter.com, the domain YOU want. In this case, Mad-Hatter.com is probably a smart choice.

If were my company, I might see if MadHatterJams.com were available before I used that hyphen.

Use your judgment on this.

TIP #3: Do what it takes to get a .com, but don’t forget about secondary extensions, .biz and .net. 

Dot coms are the most popular extensions out there. In fact, they’re so popular that it often doesn’t even occur to us to look at the URLs extension. We just automatically type in “.com.”

The rule of thumb is this: You should own at least the most popular secondary extensions of your name, .biz and .net, but do what it takes to get a dot com. It’s worth the investment, even if you have to pay more upfront.

TIP #4: Speaking of multiple extensions, why not employ a multi-domain strategy?

It means owning more than one domain name for your business, and it’s one of the most cost-effective ways to drive more traffic to your site. Let’s go back to our pizza shop owner from tip #1 to explain.

We’ll call our owner Sal, and the name of his brick-and-mortar pizza shop is called Slices by Sal. Wisely, Sal has purchased “SlicesbySal.com.” After all, that’s what anyone who knows about Sal and his pizza place will type in if they want to go to his Web site, right?

Well, maybe, if they can remember the name of his pizza place. But what if they can’t? Or what if they don’t even know Sal and his fabulous pizza exist when their craving strikes? Then what will they do? Well, what would you do? Chances are you’d go to Google and type in “Pizza + Peabody.” And if Sal is smart, he’ll own PeabodyPizza.com along with NorthShorePizza.com (all additional domain names just redirect customers back to your site).

This means you can spend less on costly keyword search buys or banner advertising, thanks to all the free organic search engine traffic you’ll get.

TIP #5: Finally, be careful of copyright infringement (sorry cola distributor; you can’t be DietKoke.com).

Now, one final word of warning: a domain name that’s too similar to your competitor’s can infringe on copyright laws. This would include using your competitor’s name but spelling it slightly differently or using the same name but with a different extension, such as Target.net instead of Target.com. 

However, as with the above Mad Hatter example, if the business that has your name is not in the same industry as yours, you have a lot more freedom to get creative.

Bottom line: Now, just like in 14th century Verona, names matter.  

About the author

Jennifer Tanzi is marketing communications manager at NameMedia in Waltham, MA.  website: buydomains.com

William Faulkner once said that writers needed to “kill their little darlings.”  It’s a message about how, in order for inspiration to enter, we need to let go of the ideas we’re so in love with to make room for something better. It’s a willingness that everyone in business needs these days.

I was reminded of this when I read a story on why J.P. Morgan did better in the financial meltdown than other investment banks. The article points out that the CEO Jamie Dimon is known not only for holding strong opinions, but letting go of his passionate position when someone on his team presents a compelling argument. His leadership meetings are like “Italian family dinners,” with everyone throwing out their opinions vociferously. Said Bill Daley, the head of corporate responsibility and a former Secretary of Commerce, “People were challenging Jamie, debating him, telling him he was wrong. It was nothing like I’d seen in a Bill Clinton cabinet meeting, or anything I’d ever seen in business.”

This willingness is a huge competitive advantage during times of change. It allows us to be open to new information rather than stay loyal to our own surety or status as “the one in charge.” Contrast that to a CEO I know who is leading his organization into bankruptcy. He refuses to listen to the people he hired to advise him because he’s so attached to the belief that he knows best. The people around him are quietly looking for other jobs.

We all have beliefs we hold onto. Under stress, we tend to hold tighter. Which is precisely the opposite of what we should be doing. When things around us are changing, rather than clutching our opinions like a security blanket, we need to examine them critically. That means having a willingness to admit, even if only to yourself, that you don’t have all the answers. To invite challenges and seek out contrary opinions—“Tell me where my thinking is wrong here” “What am I missing?” “What else should we be considering?”

In the movie “Thirteen Days” about the Cuban missile crisis, you see JFK, who previously accepted unquestioningly what the generals told him about the Bay of Pigs operation which led to a fiasco, now asking all kinds of “dumb” questions and refusing to accept the experts’ assumptions. Many historians believe that it was his refusal to heed his generals that averted a nuclear war. He insisted they find another way—and they finally did.

When we’re entering unknown territory, as much as possible we should be willing to ask dumb questions and be strong enough to give up on our most cherished ideas when a better one comes along. As a Chinese proverb says, “To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is ridiculous.”