TC: GROWTH WITHOUT LIMITS

2020 was a year in which many small business owners were flying by “the seat of their pants”. New ways of marketing and communicating were forced upon small businesses. I call them hard lessons, but also very educational, in as much as we found out that we could stretch ourselves to do things that were new to us.

With vaccines becoming readily available there is a danger that many will revert to the old ways of doing things. That is the wrong plan of action! As small business owners we had to rethink everything we did, and now we must capitalize on what we have learned and look ahead to which of the changes we implemented should be continued and to what extent.

For example, we were forced to use on-line systems such as Zoom for communicating with our peers and customers. The entire time there was a desire to go back to in person communications. For me, Zoom calls and outreach in education etc. will be a permanent part of our business

Your challenge for this week is to make a list of all the changes you adopted to keep your business running. Next to each change take a few minutes and list the benefits they provide such as time savings, easier access to customers and marketing benefits.

The goal of this exercise is to determine if a change should be kept, either in its entirety or as a combination with a previous method.

You have made a great leap forward and I am sure that some, if not most, of the changes can be used as some of the limitations placed on us are being removed.

We have all taken a big step forward and tested our limitations. Now is a good time to reflect on lessons learned and how we can most effectively move forward.