How to Reinvent Your Business in 7 Easy Steps
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to start all
over again in your business and your life, knowing what you know now, but with a
completely clean slate? I've often fantasized about going back to specific
points in my life, armed with my current personal experience, learning and
wisdom, and thinking how differently I might handle situations during those
crucial life moments if I knew then what I know now.
I've been self-employed now for 7 years, and the business I started back in 1999
is no longer the business that I run. I've found that is often the case with
many entrepreneurs. You grow, change, develop, and as your life changes, or as
market conditions change, so does your business. Or, after attaining what you
think you wanted, you may find that it no longer suits you.
I've been giving much thought to the state of my business lately. Two years ago
what I thought I wanted was a very small virtual assistant practice and a
growing coaching practice. After having attained that, I had a bigger "a-ha!"
that I'm very tired of trading time for dollars. This is how most service
business owners make their money -- you have a service that's priced at xx
dollars per hour, and you trade X number of hours of your time in return for
their payment upon your completion of the service. You realize within a short
period of time that you have only so many hours in the day, and that at some
point you'll reach your earning ceiling. Increasing your prices will raise that
ceiling for awhile, but eventually you may price yourself out of the market and
have to seek a new market that can easily afford the increased fees that you
charge.
Then, to increase your income once again, you decide to hire a couple of
employees. In some cases, that move will pay off, and you can begin to create a
thriving business, rather than a sustainable practice. However, I know lots of
service business owners who tell me that their headaches tripled once they hired
employees. They opened themselves up to a whole new list of new issues with
which they now had to deal (and for which they were unprepared), and report that
their increased overhead costs on top of new employee-management issues actually
decreased their profit margin.
I vowed when I started my business that I never wanted to be a manager of
employees, as I had few fond memories of directly or indirectly supervising 70
full and part-time staff in the residence life department where I once worked.
I have managed to stay true to my vow, but now wonder what's next for me and my
business?
To answer that question, I decided to go back to the drawing board. If you want
to renovate and reinvent your business from the ground up, here are the 7 steps
I suggest you consider as you determine what's next. Thanks to Chris Barrow of
The Business Coaching Company for the idea of this exercise.
1. Find a quiet place, free from interruption, and schedule some time
for yourself. Don't bring the Blackberry or the cell phone, and turn
off your Internet connection if you're going to use your laptop to complete the
exercise. A quiet coffee shop might be an ideal location, or perhaps your
public library might offer the refuge you need.
2. Imagine if you were able to change your professional or personal life
over the next 90 days, with all of your assets and skills but with none
of your liabilities and perceived weaknesses. You're bringing with you all of
your acquired knowledge and wisdom, but leaving behind the complications,
legacies, obligations, doubts, limiting beliefs, traditions, tolerations, and
mistakes.
3. Ask yourself the following question, ""If I could start again, knowing
what I know now, what would be different?" Write a list of the top 10
things that you would do differently, or have differently around you, over the
next 90 days in both your business and your life, Do this by creating 2 columns
on a sheet of paper, one labeled Business and the other labeled Personal, and
number from 1-10 in each column.
4. Take time to consider what you have written. Get up, walk
away from it, sleep on it, and look at it again in a few days.
5. Ask yourself the following question, "So what would happen
if I made these decisions and put in place the boundaries needed to make this
happen?"
6. Consider the outcome(s), be it good, bad or ugly. Can you
live with the results if the worst of the outcomes came true? What about the
best of the results?
7. Consider the possibility of doing things differently anyway!
Indecision gets you nowhere fast. Part of the joy of self-employment is to try
something, and if you see it's not working out, try something different.
One of the things I wish I knew way back in 1999 was that my business would grow
and develop and change and may result in me being in a completely different
business from what I had initially envisioned. Had I fully recognized that
initially, the renovation process may have flowed more smoothly.
(c) 2009 Donna Gunter
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