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3
Making Changes in Your Business
If history has taught us anything, especially the past three years, it is that there is no way for the future to be accurately predicted. In some ways, this is probably a good thing because then life would be very boring. After all, it would be predictable. However, it means that when the unexpected happens, you must be prepared to make changes in your business without notice, which is something I know that many of you have already dealt with this year.
I am a planner. To some of you, this will resonate and to others, it will not. I remember at the very young age of about sixteen, thinking about my life and where I wanted to be when I was 45 years old. I thought about things like how much I would earn per year, what type of house I would live in, what type of profession I would have, and what type of car I would drive. I literally did this at sixteen, which seems so young looking back.
Now that the age of 45 has come and passed, I can say that my life is about where I envisioned it would be, even down to the style of house I live in. Admittedly, the journey to where I am today was not a straight or smooth path. It was a journey, a winding road, and at times, a few miles off-course, yet somehow I still ended up where I planned to be.
So, how did this happen? It certainly was not an easy journey by any means.
Looking back, there are three main things I did that I had control over and credit for where I am today. Here's my advice for those of you considering making changes in your business.
1) Have a plan for the distant future and the coming year. Some people call this having a vision, but I simply call it a plan. Whenever I sit down to work on my written plans, I have always tried to answer six questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how. Sometimes I don't have a complete answer on the "how," but I can confidently say that my "what" wasn't out of reach.
Too many people are only chasing what is directly in front of them, the business that is in front of them at the time, without much serious thought as to what is down the road. This is a grave mistake for business leaders. Business leaders absolutely must know where they are going. I think Zig Ziegler said it best when he said "aim for nothing, and you will hit it every time."
2) Take stock of what's working and what's not working. Most of you probably came off a record year in 2022 and possibly 2021 as well. But just because you had a record year does not mean that those years worked. Let me simply ask, were those years record years? Did your profits grow by at least the same percentage of top-line revenue growth?
I recently shared a thought with a group of business owners that I had the pleasure of sitting on an advisory meeting with last week. Here is the exact sentence that I emailed them after the meeting:
There is at least one person, or company, actively looking at you and trying to figure out how to put you out of business.
That may seem like an overly dramatic statement but, trust me, it's not. Your competitor would love to not have you as a competitor. Anyone that has entered your business in the past few years, and is competing directly with you, has taken business, revenue, and profit from you.
I say all this because you must continually take stock of what's working and not working in your business. And the most important time to do this is when you think everything is working well because that is when you are probably most vulnerable and need to do more planning in your business.
3) You need to make the necessary changes to get where you need to be. A long journey always involves small course corrections, but sometimes large corrections are necessary as well. These corrections, even the small ones, can be painful and require work, but you will never get to where you need to be without making these changes, these course corrections.
No matter what the future holds, I hope this helps you to stay prepared, keep moving forward, and get to where you want to be. Making changes may be unavoidable, but that doesn't mean your plan can't still play out just as you envisioned.Â
