Perhaps the hardest thing to do on Wall Street is to deliver bad news, negative trends or simply losses. Of course, most companies have no problem talking about what is going well or what they are working on that has great upside.
In the sports world, losses are part of the experience. Rarely does a team go undefeated at any level. As a matter of fact, even the best baseball teams lose 30% of the time. For better or for worse, teams are judged on championships won. And even in the playoffs, you can lose 3 times and still win a 7 game series.
This Sports Analogy one-pager is intended to reinforce the fact that you can have a very valuable sports franchise (re: public company) and not have won a championship recently or have had more losses than usual. It is all balance and how you have positioned what the future looks like. Just like on Wall Street.
Don’t be afraid to talk about the losses in your company. You will build more credibility than you think.
