Is It Time to Refresh Your Business?

As we make our way into a new year, it is time to take a look at your business from the highest level. There are a number of indicators to alert you to the need to refresh your business; new revenue streams, new partnerships, business presence growth, new acquisitions, business reengineering, or new locations, just to name a few.

Perhaps the easiest indicator to maintain is your business timeline. While you have ideally set up your business’ core to sustain you for 3-5 years, you will need to review your business at least once a year to stay current. Business sectors and buyer markets will continue to grow, evolve, and expand with or without you. Your own business will do the same over time. 

Think back to the beginning of your business journey:

When you first conceptualized your business, you had numerous variables to consider in the planning and execution of bringing that concept to life;

What does my brand stand for?

How can I best communicate my message to my target audience?

What is my target market?

How will I compete with my market competitors?

...and the list goes on and on.

Once you established all of your business fundamentals, it was off to the races! And, from that moment on, you’ve been living out your dream, and doing what you love day in and day out. 

That sweet spot, where we are living out our dreams, can often blind us to our present environment. We can take on an, “If it's not broke, don’t fix it,” kind of mentality. And that level of complacency, joyful or not, is a guaranteed KOD (kiss of death) for any business. 

When you start analyzing your business for refresh opportunities, a good practice is to start with your brand image. The reason for this is that your brand image sets the tone for the rest of your business; it is the culmination of your business core. As we discussed in “What is a Brand Image; Part II”, the most successful businesses out there refresh their brand every 6-8 months. When you analyze your brand for refinement, it is important to focus on the five foundational points of your brand image; the purpose of your business, your target market, your defining statement, business critical goals, and your revenue streams. Let’s start with the purpose of your business, to see how growth and evolution can affect it. 

Entrepreneurs are the modern day explorers, navigating the needs and desires of our world. When you determine the purpose of your business, you set a course for your business journey. As with any great exploration, the path you plotted at the beginning will inevitably adjust and change with every move forward, and backward. At the beginning of your journey, your purpose may have been to feed your community. Now, with new key partnerships, national attention, and immense growth potential, your purpose may have evolved to feeding the nation, or even the world, because you have the infrastructure to scale. In another example, maybe your original purpose was to provide freelance programming services to small businesses, and your new purpose is to provide full-scale programming and training services to the entire SMB (small-medium business) market. These critical evolutions are instrumental to the sustainability and continued growth of your business. That is to say that the ebb and flow of any journey will change everything around you over time. If you do not grow and evolve with the flow, you and your business will be left behind.

The purpose of your business is the point on the horizon that all other details of your business look to as a guiding light. Once you have addressed your business’ purpose, analyze the remaining brand foundations; your target market, your defining statement, your business critical goals, and your revenue streams. Make sure to analyze each one of these brand foundations individually, and as a whole, to ensure a clear and sustainable vision moving forward. Not every refresh will require a full business overhaul. Some opportunities will be as simple as releasing and updating your logo, or your defining statement. Pay attention to how your business’ purpose has changed, and how that change will impact each detail of your business.

For every variable you considered and addressed in the beginning of your business journey, you have that many variables to keep fresh and current. Once your brand is up to date, here are a few additional aspects to consider:

•  Does your logo kit still speak to your newly vetted brand image? 

• Have you updated your website with your new branding, services / products, team members, reviews, etc.? 

• Is your marketing strategy and content development reflective of your current message? 

• Are your market uniques and business guarantees up to date? 

• When was the last time you sat down with your vendors and suppliers to review performance and pricing? 

It is all too easy to forget that with growth, comes change. You must be an agent of change for your business to provide the sustainability and support needed for that continued growth. To stay current, you must be current. That means recognizing the change indicators, and maintaining your business timeline, to keep your business up to date and all of the moving parts going in the same direction as one. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, or having trouble establishing the next right step, you may be ready to bring on additional owner support. Just remember, let your vision guide you; your purpose is your passion. Your passion led you to your business journey, and will continue to guide you along the right path.

When you’re ready to take the next step, we’re here for you.