201: How to Rethink Your Business for Maximum Success

Michele (0:00) Today’s podcast is a repeat episode aired while we were beginning the pandemic. While life and business are a bit different now, the message is the same. Challenges change – business landscapes change. And we need to be able to dissect our businesses, analyze them and perhaps put them back together again in a different way. Really knowing the pieces and parts of our business, as well as what we're great at, or our core competency, helps us to determine the best ways that we can show up and then serve our ideal client. We're going to focus on how to be nimble in an ever-changing world on this podcast along with how to grow and scale while keeping flexibility, which is not always easy. These concepts will allow us to maneuver through any change. I hope you enjoy.

Michele (0:48) Everyday empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company’s financial health, and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design industry, educator and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice.

Michele (1:19) Okay, so today we're going to jump in and think about how 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 business. And that doesn't mean that it's going to grow into this huge, gigantic thing. It really just means to be extremely intentional about every single thing that we're doing.

Michele (1:42) And so while we have all been home for the last couple of months here, we have an opportunity to stop and to look at things differently. And when we get back to doing business full-time, it's not going to be just like it was. That's not necessarily a bad thing and it's not meant to scare you. It's just to say, we have shifted and we have changed and things are now different. Many of us have discovered things about our business that maybe we didn't recognize before we have new insights now. Perhaps some of you have discovered that there are parts of your business that you've never really liked or don't enjoy anymore. I know a couple of my clients have said that "I had an offer that when it kind of went away, and I didn't have to do it anymore, I didn't realize how much joy I felt that I didn't have to do that." Some of you may have found some things where your processes were broken, or you didn't have the detail that you needed, or the efficiencies weren't there. I found places in my company where I couldn't pivot as quickly as I wanted to. So there were some things that I tried to get things as efficient and as scheduled. Sometimes when you have to work outside of the norm, you start to see things differently.

Michele (2:57) And maybe you even determined that your current staff or your current ideal clients, or your current vendors that you had been working with are not also ideal anymore. And you're going to have to make changes there.

Michele (3:10) We've really had this interesting break in the business, as usual, to kind of stop and contemplate business as we know it. And so we are perfectly poised in 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. Even just some completely, totally new out of left field ideas 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.

Michele (3:42) To some degree. I'll be honest, I would be more concerned coming out of all of this. If businesses were to say, "Hey, business, as usual, doing just what we did at the beginning of March. Come in, not one thing has changed.” I think my radar, my spidey senses would be on high alert. With that going, "What do you mean you've not done anything differently?" For many of us, we're in these rolling openings across the country. And it might be that you can go out but it's got to be with a mask or you've got to make sure you use hand sanitizer. I mean, for somebody to come back and say, let's go do business and not one thing has changed. That should make us a bit weary, even if it's just our thought processes have changed.

Michele (4:23) I had started to pivot my business back in January of this year right before everything has happened. And I can speak from experience creating a pivot, creating a strategy change can be very scary and a bit unnerving. Based on what you cut. How much is it? Where is it? Changing from one thing to another. Changing technology. But I can also tell you this, having made my own decisions after much thought, data collection, preparation, and prayer, it was absolutely worth it. These last two months of being in my home and then having time to consider my business in a completely different way. When I made the shifts and changes that I needed to make in January to kind of realign some of my work. What I was doing and how I was serving and showing up in the world. I had one idea in January, I was working hard to get some alignment in that. And then darn, March shows up two months later, and just kind of like a whiplash. But it feels in some ways like I've been on a roller coaster, as I know many of you have. And being home even though that's pretty much my normal, it almost like my mind got off of the roller coaster and I was able to recalibrate. And so just because I pivoted earlier than many of you potentially, it doesn't mean that you don't have time to pivot or that you can't.

Michele (5:48) And so I just really want you to stop and not miss the opportunity to come out of this business different and better than when you went in. Now if you went into all of this and everything was absolutely perfect in your company, kudos for you. My hope is that you were able to maintain that through all of this and that you can restart with that in mind. But for many of us, there were areas that we wanted to address or things that we wanted to adjust. I've heard all kinds of things from, "Oh my gosh, I'm starting to get organized in my emails or organized in my file structures. I'm trying new technology that I hadn't tried before. Or I'm looking to hire a new person, I thought I needed this type of help. And now I need this type of help." I've even heard on the opposite side, "I realized that we could be more efficient, I didn't need certain people to work in my team anymore. I needed to realign my team for different reasons. Or the clients that I thought were my best, that they weren't my best when all of this happened."

Michele (6:51) So it's almost like a clarity, like really starting to understand and look at... It's the things that we don't take the time to look at and to analyze because we're so busy. This has given us a perspective that we would not have had had we not had some of these things happen. So, perception and perspective has all shifted. Okay?

Michele (7:17) And so here are some things that we can do not to miss all of these opportunities so that we can look at our businesses a little bit differently and come out of it in a better place and doing work in a better way and in a way that maybe is more in alignment for each of us.

Michele (7:36) The first thing I want to suggest is that we consider breaking your business apart into building blocks. Alright, so think about it like this. First, we know that yes, we are all in the interior design industry in some way. And so we serve the world by making custom window treatments. By designing beautiful rooms. We install blind shutters. We create furniture. Whatever it is that we do to serve our clients in the interior design industry. But I would also tell you and you all know this and you know, kind of in your gut, business is the same, like we all have to have some type of marketing. We all have to take care of our finances. We all have to have sales. We all have to 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.

Michele (8:28) And so here's what I want you to think about. If I were to put a box in front of you of Legos. Let's say it's one of those boxes where you can buy the complete set. And the box has a picture of the puzzle pieces if you will if you were doing a puzzle. You're looking at this Lego box. On the outside, for example, is the NASA Apollo Saturn rocket. I know that because I bought that one for my husband for his birthday. He loves Legos. I have a whole family of Legos. So both my boys are in Construction Engineering. They love to build. So you've got this box of Legos. And on the outside is this picture of this rocket, okay. And then you open it up and there is an instruction guide that tells you how to put all these little tiny pieces and parts of Legos together to make this NASA Apollo Saturn rocket. And 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 follow those, 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 connections. They would put it together with the way they were instructed to put it together. They would look at it and play with it. Then they would take it apart and they would start building on their own creation using those same pieces.

Michele (9:49) Well, that's what we get to do with business. If you think about this Lego set it is your business plan. So the picture of the Lego set, that Apollo Saturn rocket is a picture of where you thought your business was going to go. And you took all these bits and pieces of marketing, sales, order, process and you put them all together. You created this perfect little business plan. Created your financial plan at the beginning of the year. You created your marketing plan at the beginning of the year. You have all your little plans in place. And I'm not discounting them by calling them little just saying we have our plans in place. And now all of a sudden, everything that we had kind of assumed was going to happen doesn't happen. We can't just always do business as usual. So if you can then realize how to start taking everything apart a piece at a time and understanding them as building blocks, you can then put them back together 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. I need a couple of extra pieces over here. We're all building these businesses, but they don't all have to look exactly the same.

Michele (11:07) That is the beauty of the coaching program that I do. I'm not creating copycats, and everybody looks like everybody else. It's really about helping you understand those building blocks. So in a process like this, we're looking to kind of rebuild our business in a different way. When you understand all the building blocks in your company, you can take them apart. You can look at each area of your company individually, and then put it back together in a slightly different way. And so that's what I want to encourage you to start doing. When you do that. You then can take those building blocks and put them together into multiple models. Like for example, I would have had and done in my business. Here's the model of what my business looks like in January, February, and I would say the first two weeks in March. Then I've got a model of what my business looks like right now. And then I've got a model of what my business hopefully will look like on the other side.

Michele (12:09) So here are a couple of areas that you could break down your business into. Just let this be an example. So you can go further and deeper, you can be as granular as you want or need to be. But I will tell you this before I give you all those. Businesses that know the individual building blocks in their company, are usually more astute and more proactive and making whatever changes they need to make. They absolutely completely understand the inner complexities and dependencies between the roles and responsibilities throughout their entire organization. And so by saying that, that should already start to get your mind going. Here are some of those building blocks. Staff, processes, offers, rates. What is our package? What are our offers? What are our products or services? Your fees, your hours, and your expectations. Your why. Values. Mission. Vision, all of those are building blocks. And we're putting them together in a multitude of ways. So start learning to break the business apart into building blocks. And let me say this before we move on. When you've done that, sometimes it is very enlightening. You start to realize which building blocks are more solid, and which ones may need a bit more help. Okay. So break them apart, look at them.

Michele (13:34) The next thing I want you to do is to start trying to put them together in a new way. That was what I described a minute ago. Start putting them together. If you don't like the way that your business was heading before. You don't think that that particular style of doing business is going to support you when we come out of some of these changes, now's the time to make it different. You can try multiple models. I do that all the time I analyze and draw upon a whiteboard, here are the different models of how this could work. And then I start to see which ones feel more right to me. Which ones do I have better resource alignment with? And where can I go forward? Maybe during all of this, one of the things that you've realized is one of the building blocks is sales. You've realized you need more than one income stream. We're seeing that everywhere, right? And so what is it that needs to change for that to happen? Maybe you need a different offer. Maybe you need to price it differently. Maybe you need a different process to deliver your offer. Right? I mean, some of us are jumping right into a design those that haven't. Maybe they dabbled in it or thought about it. Well, all of a sudden when we've cut off our ability to be face to face with somebody if you have a business that requires you to only be face to face with the current mode of how it has been constructed. Now's a good time to stop and say, does it have to be that way? Or perhaps could I go in and shift the way that I am presenting things to my clients so that I can have a different business model? Right. And so that's what we're all doing right now, is stopping and asking ourselves, is this working? Is there another way to shift it? Is there another way to adjust it?

Michele (15:23) Some of you are coming up with ideas of things that you may only want to offer during this transition time. You're thinking to yourself, “I'll do this right now. It's not what I did before. And I don't want to go back to it later.” That's okay. That's alright. But some of you are realizing, "Oh my gosh I really like this new way of putting my business together. I like the flexibility of not having to be tied to being in someone's house." I even had a client the other day say, "You know what I really realized I don't enjoy the procurement part of design, and I'm going to let that go. I prefer this part." And it's okay, this is a perfect time to make that pivot and make those changes. As you're doing that though, let's say that you're looking at Distance Designer, E Design, you don't always have to start from the ground up. Another client that I spoke to this week, I thought that it meant that they had to start from the beginning. And this is where we've talked about in different circles, taking one step back. It's not about starting from the beginning, it is about using the building blocks that you already had. In general, the way you're going to do design is not going to change. Some of your deliverables may or may not change. The biggest change is you're not in the space physically in most of those cases. And so what you have to change, add, delete or substitute to be able to produce the same work product or service. If you can't do it the way you used to do it, how does that process change? But the core of how do you design that you don't have to change that. Those building blocks are already pretty solid there, right? You might have to have another technology tool, but okay.

Michele (17:14) So once you start looking at it and putting the business back together again. You then start to get this clarity around what you've been doing, what you want to do, what you don't want to do, and more than one model of how it can be. For some, this can feel overwhelming, and I want to acknowledge that but for others, this can be super exciting. It could be you know what, “I want to reimagine my business I'm going to rethink it. I've been doing it so long the same way that I'm getting bored or that I've wanted to shift but I didn't know when the right time or how to do that.” Well, now's the time again, everybody's kind of expecting us to come out of this with a new something. Even just a new attitude or a new way of doing whatever it is we do. I want to say this too, know the core competency of your business. And if what you have been offering as your most prolific product or service is not what you want the core competency of your business to be, then you may need to really dig down a few more levels when you're taking the business apart to put it back together. The last thing we want is for product and service offerings that most people are purchasing, to not be what you most want to be known for, and most what to do. So used this as the time to be extremely honest. What do you love about your current business? What have you not loved? What's been bugging you? What do you not fight? And where are you willing to change it?

Michele (18:38) Knowing and affirming your why, your values, your mission, and vision. I always use that as a first step in the rebuild. Because to me, that is the heartbeat of the company. Even back in January was working through all of mine. I wrote it down. I wrote all of that down, the why, the values. I kept reading them to myself every day. When the next hard thing would come up, because listen, not all of this is going to be easy. This isn't like, "Oh, let's just rebuild. And it's all going to be easy." Sometimes you have to have very difficult conversations as a result of some of the changes that you need to make. But I kept thinking, "I have got to keep my business going in a direction, that makes me happy. I have got to go in the direction that makes my soul feel fulfilled, I have got to build a business where I feel like I am in 100% alignment with my mind, my heart, my soul and the work that I'm doing. If I don't, I cannot show up the best of those that are meant to serve. And so if it means I got to do really hard things at the beginning of the year, to be able to show up and to do that, I owe it to myself and I owe it to my clients to do that. And you need to be able to do the same thing. There is no reason that we should be building businesses that we're not 100% in love with. I'm not saying we got to love everybody. Or the aspect of it. But I don't want to build a business or even start a business that then shifts and morphs and changes that I don't feel as strongly connected to. And so we're constantly having to make these adjustments and these changes. And then sometimes when we do that, over time, we end up with a hodgepodge of products or a hodgepodge of services. That doesn't fit us anymore.

Michele (20:23) That's kind of where I was. So I had to remove a lot of products and services that just were not in alignment with me moving forward. And I'm still in that refining process even now. One of the things though, with the why and the values every time I read it, it just helped calm me. I was doing everything that I was doing and making the changes that I'm making. Not just because I had a stressful day, not because I'm just being willy nilly, but I didn't because they fit a longer-term strategy of knowing the type of company I wanted to be and where I wanted to go and how I wanted to get there. And, again, here we are a couple of months later, I already started some shifts. And now I'm even doing more shifting internally here and there just to keep up with the changes that are happening in our world. And all of our businesses need to stop and think that way.

Michele (21:20) I want to hold on to the soul of my company. The why and the values and all of those things. No matter how I build my services, or which services and products I choose to build, no matter which vendors I work with, or clients I work with or any of it. Everything has to align with my why, my values, and my vision for my company. So if you've not written that down, consider starting there. Write it down and then use it as a litmus test to measure what you built, where you're going, the desire you want to go in in the future, and start making some of those shifts. We should always be working to become the business that we want to be. There's no time that's going to be perfect, there is no time that's going to come without any kind of pain, or frustration or difficult choices. That's just part of it. That's just part of being a business owner.

Michele (22:12) If you've already had to stop work or reduce work, or you've had to do anything like that, why not use the time to the best of your ability to come back in a better way. So break your business apart into all the different building blocks, and then start practicing putting those building blocks together in a new way. Keep at the forefront your why, your mission, your vision, and your values. Keep the heartbeat. Keep the soul of the company. Understand your core competency and try out a couple of different things. I did that. I wrote it down. I could do it this way, I could put it together that way. Which one felt right to me? Which one felt the best for me? Which one was getting me closer to some of my other overall goals? And that's what You have an opportunity to do now.

Michele (23:02) And thirdly, after you've broken it apart and rebuild it in a couple of different ways. You've chosen a strategy and a direction to go that says, here's what I think I want to look like now. I want to encourage you to continue to improve and redesign as necessary. If I have learned anything during my 20 years in business, it's this. You never build it and take your hands off of it and consider it done. As much as I would love to do that. And I know that all of you probably feel very much the same way. As much as I would love to say, "Oh, my goodness, I've done it. I can walk away and go do something else." There's this relief feeling in that right. But that's just not how it works.

Michele (23:40) Business has its own heartbeat. It is growing, it is morphing, it is changing. And so there are constant checks. There are constant metrics, KPIs, indicators. We're always looking to tweak them and to analyze them and to shift them over and over and over again. That's just not meant to overwhelm you. We're not having to do it all at one time. But we do need to set up checkpoints, if you will, that kind of let you know, are you hitting your goals? Are you not hitting your goals? Where do I need to focus now? Where do I need to focus next? We can't focus on all of it at one time. And so when I start to build out a certain area in my company, I put a couple of checkpoints in place and then I go move to the next area of my company. So there's always this iterative process, always striving to improve profitability, efficiency, or something so that I can get my time back. The goal here is to reclaim our time and maximize our money while providing the best product and service out there.

Michele (24:42) In six months, we could be facing another disruption. In a year. Who knows, it could be any type of disruption. It doesn't have to be a global disruption. It could be a personal disruption, somebody gets sick. You have a wedding for your son or your daughter. You're preparing and it takes you away from work. All disruptions aren't bad. We could face anything like that. It could be a follow up to this or again, something entirely new. But if we start now to do the work to really break apart our business. Know what every process does. Know the people that sent it. Know the building blocks. Start to have an idea of different ways we could put it back together.

Michele (25:24) You're kind of running, what-if scenarios if you think about it. What if we can't go into their home? What if we have a supply chain disruption? What if this, what if that? What if I don't like doing this anymore? What if I don't like doing that? What if I want to add this in? You're creating different scenarios to see how you would put your business back together. Then set up those checkpoints so that as you redesign and as you continue to improve, you know how to keep going back and looking at it. It's really about doing the work to know these pieces individually. And then collectively putting back together and having a roadmap to get to the point to make the next pivot. Successful businesses are just a string of pivots. You go back and listen to anybody who's been in business for a while. And now they're going to tell you, and then this happened. And here's how I responded. And then this happened. And here's how I responded. And on the other side of here's how I responded, some of it is going to be great things, but it worked out well. And sometimes they're going to go in that did not work out so well. And here's what I learned. And so next time I did it this way, but business is a string of pivots. You can just about look at your agreement or your contract is as a string of pivots. You know, we constantly are updating those documents and updating our internal processes for what worked and what didn't work where we got burned or, you know, where we provided excellent service and the client loved it and it was outside of our norm so we made it our norm. This is just a beautiful time as well. Thinking about it to say, “How do I want to come back from this?”

Michele (28:30) And so as you recreate your restart plan, which we've talked about on a prior podcast, put in some time breaking apart the business you have today. Ask yourself, Is there a new or a better way to put it back together that creates a business that satisfies you more? I mean, maybe you're thinking I need to be more flexible in case my kids have to come home and do school again. Or maybe you've decided through all of this that you want to homeschool your kids and so how could you reimagine your business to be able to do that? Maybe you found that you like being more virtual in nature anyway so that you could travel, all of those things. This is the opportunity to do it.

Michele (29:09) Maybe you're just thinking about preparing to hire and knowing that you want to start offering something different as a complement to what you already have. If nothing else, doing this work, breaking your business apart, reimagining it in multiple ways, asking the what-if questions, and then going through and refining it. It will give you confidence in what you're already doing. Maybe you're doing it in the best way that you can for you with what you want. It's going to help you with marketing, it's going to help you with positioning, and it's going to help you not miss a beat as you continue to move forward in this year.

Michele (29:48) And so I want to encourage you, don't waste the free pivot. Don't waste the pivot. If you want to tell a strategy for your business. Come over to ScarletThreadConsulting.com and check out my site to see how we can work together. I would love to help you focus your business to get what you need. I use the AIM Methodology which is aligning your team, igniting your process, and managing your money all by being very intentional. Because I don't believe that profit happens by accident and I don't think success does either. Not a lasting, sustainable, repeatable success. I'm happy to help you. And again you can find out more by visiting ScarletThreadConsulting.com.