I am starting to wonder if reevaluating your business, your strengths, and your personal and professional goals shouldn’t be part of your quarterly planning process.
Having coached solo and small business owners for a decade, I’ve noticed there are predictable points where you need to step back and reevaluate.
Here are some of the points I have seen:
- Market shift
- Personal life situation shift
- Business model shift
- 5+ years in business
As we’re charting our path forward out of the pandemic, I’m sure many of you are rethinking aspects of your business – and your life.
Where are you now?
How are you doing right now?
Are you mentally sharp?
Do you have energy?
Are you worn down by the grind of the pandemic?
Are you grieving?
Are you having health issues?
As a small business owner, all of these will affect your business.
While it’s tempting to hide behind your brand, in many cases you ARE the brand.
What do you want to be doing?
As a small business owner, you may be doing all the functions in your business.
Or, you may have multiple service offerings. Are you trying to do too many things?
Is there some aspect of your business that sucks the life out of you?
Maybe it’s time to stop doing that – or bring in an employee or contractor to help you with that?
Where are you heading?
If you’ve been running around with your hair on fire for years, or trying to homeschool your kids while growing your business, you may need to hit a pause button.
You may need to pull up and objectively look at what your business goals are – and whether you still want to head in that direction.
A colleague of mine realized that she wants to have some flexibility to take time off this summer. She rescheduled some events from May to September and left white space in her calendar to go on a road trip, write a book, or do whatever she wants to.
You may not be able to do that, but it’s still valuable to recommit to your goals, change them, or ditch them completely.
Not all of us want to build a big business. A lifestyle business may actually be what you want.
Conversely, maybe you’re not thinking big enough. Are you ready to commit to a bigger vision of who you are and what you bring to the world?
That’s actually the place I am at the moment. The pandemic got me thinking about my business, my best clients, what I actually want to be doing in my business, and how I want to work.
Here’s what I came up with:
I want to be doing more group coaching. The new job search coaching group is phenomenal. Participants are making huge progress in very short time. This is a giant win-win because I am loving doing it, and participants are getting great results.
It leverages my time, too. Bonus!
I like diving deep with clients. I have decided to focus less on selling coaching packages and more on getting retainer clients. I adjusted my pricing to make it work for both the client and for me. (Solo service providers might want to check this out.)
I want to do more virtual speaking and presenting. While many speakers don’t love presenting over Zoom, I absolutely do. Even when we can go back to speaking in person, I think Zoom will remain my preferred option. I have gotten to the point where I can fully engage with participants and give them a transformational experience virtually.
I want to continue partnering with other professionals. I’ve had a great time and learned a ton from partnering with TENWOMENSTRONG. We have some things on the calendar for September and I am really looking forward to it.
So, that’s where I am. Where are you? As we begin Q2, take a few minutes (or hours) to confirm that you’re going in the right direction and doing what you actually want to be doing.
