How to Rethink Your Business for Maximum Success

Have you ever thought about dissecting your business, analyzing it, and putting it back together again in a different way?

Let’s focus on how to be nimble in an ever-changing world, and how to grow and scale while maintaining flexibility, which is not always easy. This will allow us to maneuver through any change.

We are going to rethink our business for maximum success. As many of you know, my AIM With Intent™ Methodology is meant to help you grow and scale your interior design firm. And that doesn't mean that it's going to grow into this huge, gigantic thing. The goal is to be extremely intentional about everything that we're doing, no matter how small the task.

During the pandemic, we had an opportunity to stop and to look at things differently. Then we slowly moved back to doing business full-time which in some ways looked and behaved differently than pre-pandemic. It may be that we shifted, changed, and how we operate is different now. Many of us have discovered things and have new insights and views about our business as we worked outside our norm. We are perfectly poised at this time to make some changes that either we didn't recognize in the past that we needed to make, or that we knew, but we didn't have time to make. There may be some completely, totally new ideas out of left field that now we want to try.

We have a free pass to pivot. Let me say that again. We have a free pass to pivot.

I had started to pivot my business back in January 2020 right before the pandemic began. And I can speak from experience in pivoting, that creating a change in strategy can be very scary and a bit unnerving based on what you cut out or add in. Changing from one way to deliver goods and services to another, or implementing new technology can cause you to take a deep breath. But I can also tell you this, having made my own decisions after much thought, data collection, preparation, and prayer, it was worth it. Those months of being in my home and then having time to consider my business in a completely different way, was eye opening. I chose to make several shifts and changes in my business that I needed to make in January to realign some of my work such as “what I was doing” and “how I was serving and showing up in the world”. 

It is never too late to pivot. I am encouraging you to stop and not miss the opportunity to come out of this business differently and better than when you went in. There may be some of you that weathered the pandemic and aftermath without any interruptions in your company and kudos to you! It may be now that as you look back on the last three years that you may want to address or review things that you want to adjust.

When doing a deep dive review into your business, there is a resulting clarity as you look at the big picture of your business. Often, the items that float to the top are areas we have not taken the time to look at and analyze because we're so busy. We now have a view that we would not have had if some of these things had not happened. The goal is to determine how we can come out of this review in a better place, doing work in a better way, and in a way that maybe is more in alignment for each of us.

First, I want to suggest that we consider breaking your business apart into building blocks. Let’s think about it like this. Whatever it is that we do, we do to serve our clients in the interior design industry. Our businesses are all similar in many respects. We all have some type of marketing. We all must take care of our finances. We all must have sales. We all must have some type of process. There are certain pieces and parts to our business that are the same no matter what it is we're doing.

I want you to think about and visualize this.

You're looking at a Lego box that will create a Lego NASA Apollo Saturn rocket. The picture is on the front of the box. As you open the box, there is an instruction guide that tells you how to put all these little, tiny pieces and parts of Legos together to make this design. You sit down and you put it together. But some of you are thinking, "I don't like to follow directions”, or “I don't really want to do it that way”, or “I don't really want to make that rocket". Maybe you made the rocket and then you think, "Okay, now what else can I make?" My kids used to do that all the time. It didn't matter if it was a set of Duplo blocks or K’nex. They would put it together with the way they were instructed to put it together and they would look at it and play with it. Then they would take it apart and they would start building their own creation using those same pieces.

I want you to think about and visualize this. You're looking at a Lego box that will create a Lego NASA Apollo Saturn rocket. The picture is on the front of the box. As you open the box, there is an instruction guide that tells you how to put all these little, tiny pieces and parts of Legos together to make this design. You sit down and you put it together. But some of you are thinking, "I don't like to follow directions”, or “I don't really want to do it that way”, or “I don't really want to make that rocket". Maybe you made the rocket and then you think, "Okay, now what else can I make?" My kids used to do that all the time. It didn't matter if it was a set of Duplo blocks or K’nex. They would put it together with the way they were instructed to put it together and they would look at it and play with it. Then they would take it apart and they would start building their own creation using those same pieces.

Business as usual isn’t always so usual.

Learning how to disassemble the business we created to put it back together in a new and different way is a super power. Understanding the building blocks of a business is crucial. Once you understand them, however, you can take them apart and then put them back together in a multitude of ways. Much the way that we would have taken apart a Lego set that was meant to create one thing and we would put it together in a different way to create something else. You may look and say, “here are some pieces I don't need “or “I need a couple of extra pieces over here”. We're all building our business, and they don't all have to look the same as another’s business.

That is the beauty of the coaching program that I offer.. I'm not creating copycat businesses, nor does every business look like all the others. It's focused on helping you understand the building blocks. Learning the skillset to look at each area of your company individually, and then put it back together in a slightly different way is what we encourage you to do.

Let's look at a few of the possible building blocks for your company:

Your staff, processes, offers, rates, fees, hours, packages, products, services, and your expectations. Your “why”. Your values. Your mission and your vision.  Those are your building blocks. And you will be putting them together in a multitude of ways. It may be quite enlightening when you break apart and identify each block. You can start to realize which building blocks are more solid, and which ones may need a bit more help.

You could break down your business further since you can be as granular as you want or need to be. Be aware that businesses that know the individual building blocks in their company are usually more astute, more proactive, and make whatever changes they need to make earlier than those who don’t. They absolutely and completely understand the inner complexities and dependencies between the roles and responsibilities throughout their entire organization. The attributes of those successful businesses should already start to get your mind going.

Secondly, I want you to start trying to put these building blocks together in a new way. You can try multiple models. I do that all the time. I analyze and draw on a whiteboard all the different models of how my business could work. And then I start to see which ones feel more right and aligned to me. 

Doing this work, breaking your business apart, reimagining it in multiple ways, asking the what-if questions, and then going through and refining it will give you confidence in what you're already doing or in where you are choosing to go. These steps will help you with positioning, and it's going to help you not miss a beat as you continue to move forward in this year and the years to come.

I want to encourage you, don't waste the free pivot. If you need assistance, sign up for a Discovery Call and let’s talk. You are in control of the business you are building.