Last week I attended a seminar for small business owners. One of the speakers addressed opportunities with the military. As some readers may know, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base located close to Dayton, is the largest single-site employer in Ohio with about 27,000 employees. That does not include the businesses in close proximity to the base that may have contracts with it.
One of the challenges of small businesses is to bid against large companies for contracts. The speaker suggested small companies team up together and bid as one. Then you may have more equal footing.
I have been thinking about the analogy of the children's game "Red Rover" for so many topics I bring up on this blog, and certainly this example applies here. Red Rover is played with 2 rows of children, holding hands, stretching out their arms, and the rows facing one another. Each team takes turns and during a turn each row yells out a name of a child on the opposing team. The child runs, chooses where to break the holding hands by their body, and if they break the hold, takes a child back to its team. If not, the runner stays on the opposing side. Eventually one team has all but one child and the game is concluded.
The phrase I have wanted to use so many times is this: "it isn't fun to play Red Rover by yourself." In other words, holding out your arms to your side won't get much done, but when others hold on to you, and others hold on to them, etc. then things can get accomplished.
This rule of thumb can be applied to so many situations and certainly in business. Looking, networking, and combining with others can put ideas into actions and results in success.
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