If your business has been losing steam and you find yourself faced with the prospect that it may end up needing to close altogether, give some consideration to how you can create a brand new “origin story."
For anyone who has undertaken the arduous journey of launching their own small business enterprise, the prospect of taking that existing venture and completely reinventing it might sound downright ridiculous. Simply going through all the necessary hoops to be able to finally open your doors may seem to you like the destination of your entrepreneurial trek, but the reality is that it could be just the beginning. Everyone dreams of starting their business and immediately connecting with a large and loyal customer or client base, but the reality can tend to play out in ways that are a bit less successful.
The first issue to be discussed involves determining the best course of action if things aren’t working well for your new business. For many, dealing with the harsh realities of the marketplace after all of the initial excitement has faded can introduce a defeatist mindset. When your life’s goal of launching your own venture appears to be a colossal flop, it can be tempting to want to merely throw in the towel and walk forever away from everything in the business realm. There certainly can be scenarios where that may be the only viable option. Still, after investing so much time, energy, and money, it’s really in your best interest to rethink the approach you’re taking and look for other possibilities.
The catalysts for taking a second look at what your business is all about are varied and can be specific and unique to your own enterprise. A reality of the marketplace is that the paying public can tend to be fickle, in love with what you’re offering today and tomorrow looking for greener pastures. This truth can fly in the face of the dream of attracting and retaining customers for the long term and can completely shake the foundations of your business. Sometimes, new trends come on the scene that might be outside the scope of what you’re currently offering. If that happens, you’re basically left with one of two choices: either embrace professional adaptation so that you can serve the needs of those looking for that “next big thing” or watch them turn to your competitors to get what they need.
Competition is always the nadir of any business, but in the complexities of the 2020s marketplace, this is especially so. One of the ways that this can play out is in market saturation. It’s possible that you enjoyed the luxury of operating in your own lane when you first opened, meeting a need that no one else was addressing. But over time, other businesses stepped forward and began offering the same thing, and now you’ve just become a face in the crowd. Since people have the option of looking elsewhere, the only way to remain relevant is to explore things that differentiate you from your competition.
A further extension of this can be when your competition ends up offering not only the same thing you do but with the benefit of what’s referred to as “value-added.” This takes the basic product or service and enhances it to transform it to an entirely different level. Especially in situations where the competitor is able to do this while maintaining pricing that’s not significantly higher than yours, you might find yourself really struggling to hold your ground.
The outside influence of broader economic factors can also play a key role in a business grappling with the concept of reinventing itself. During the years of the pandemic, many enterprises were faced with the reality that they couldn’t keep doing business the way that they always had. The inability to be in close physical proximity created a massive challenge for many ventures and demanded that alternative approaches be put into place. Some businesses were caught completely off guard from a technological standpoint and decided they didn’t have the wherewithal to invest revenue and time into exploring solutions like cloud-based computing and virtual meetings.
Other businesses that viewed the challenges of the pandemic as an opportunity to grow and adapt found themselves actually embracing new opportunities and penetrating markets that they likely would have never pursued otherwise. Investigating new tech and radically different approaches toward client or customer interaction caused those companies to mature and develop their existing business models in ways that enabled them to solidify their standing in the marketplace. The pandemic ended up drawing a dramatic contrast between those who were willing to change and adapt and those who remained firmly entrenched in their existing approach simply because of the argument “we’ve always done things this way.” Unfortunately, many well-established businesses fell by the wayside because they were unwilling or unable to figure out how to exist under the new parameters.
Irrespective of which catalyst might be working against the success of your small business, there are several factors to consider if you’ve decided to reinvent who you are and what you do. Before taking any steps, you need to purposefully make your decisions based on something more than a mere knee-jerk reaction. This starts with taking a sober and detailed look at your current state of affairs, from the revenue you have to operate with to the number of people you serve and everything else in between. Did your clientele drop off dramatically in the last six months? Did the new product or program that you sunk significant resources into seem to not do as well as you’d hoped?
One way that you can look at your existing state of affairs is through the S.W.O.T. technique, where you analyze your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. By doing this, you can determine whether or not the business can be improved by some minor tweaking or if it’ll require a complete overhaul in order to stay relevant. It can also be beneficial to utilize tools like customer surveys to hear directly from the people you serve about how effectively you’ve been meeting their needs. The feedback you receive from doing this can be very telling, and you may discover that you need to seek out a different target demographic to be on the receiving end of whatever you’re offering.
Part of your discovery may be that you need to make major alterations to the structure of your venture, well beyond simply adjusting what’s already in place. This can literally mean that you need to change the fundamental aspect of what your business is all about, and that can sometimes necessitate going so far as rebranding yourself. If you’ve decided that your only chance of success is to be found by changing your identity, recognize that doing so will involve completely recreating your image – from the name of the business to the logos and graphics you use to market your services. One of the unfortunate byproducts of doing this is that many will continue to think of you in your previous iteration, and you may have an uphill battle with reinventing yourself within the confines of your local marketplace.
Once you begin to make changes on this scale, you also may discover that you need to seek out a new audience. Altering the primary aspects of what you do may bring with it the need to find the best possible fit for your revised offerings. You can conduct market research to find the target demographic that makes the most sense for what you’re doing now, not what you were doing when you first launched five years ago. Embracing a new audience carries with it the need to figure out how to best communicate your current message to that particular group, so your entire marketing and advertising approach will likely need to be modified as well.
One of the most crucial aspects of professionally reinventing yourself involves clearly and consistently presenting the “how” and “why” behind the new you. Social media can help you present your reimagined identity to those who were previously familiar with you. If you can do this in a compelling way and show the added value you can bring through your newly revised offerings, it can help combat the ongoing issue of people still thinking of you exclusively based on what you used to do.
If your business has seen better days, purpose that there are even better days ahead. But grabbing hold of that purpose will require you to take steps that might seem scary and unsure even at the best of times, so starting that journey is definitely not for the faint of heart. But if your business has been losing steam and you find yourself faced with the prospect that it may end up needing to close altogether, give some consideration to how you can create a brand new “origin story” that positions you well to serve clients or customers in ways that you never could have as your old self.
Ready to take the next step in reinventing your small business? At ValorExcel, we're here to help you navigate the challenges of professional adaptation and uncover new growth opportunities. Don’t face this journey alone—reach out to us today for personalized guidance and support. Together, we can transform your vision into reality! Visit our website at https://www.valorexcel.com/book-online to book your Power Hour session where you'll meet with ValorExcel staff to get started. You can also call us at 240-329-9387 or email us at info@valorexcel.com. Reach out to ValorExcel today and take the first steps toward realizing your full potential. #BusinessReinvention #AdaptAndThrive #ValorExcel #EntrepreneurSupport #InnovateYourBusiness
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