I recently had a call from a client which really hammered home to me that it is up to us to design our businesses in the way that we want to…
He was being pushed in a certain direction by potential business partners who were promising to find him investment, media exposure and market access. Whilst it could be potentially extremely lucrative, it was very much going against his ethos of why he set up his business and his vision for how he wanted to grow it organically.
It just didn’t sit comfortably with him, despite the enormous potential of what he was being offered.
It is so easy for us to end up playing to someone else’s tune, someone else’s agenda – it might be clients, customers, suppliers, business partners.
But we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that it is about designing a business to design a life with ‘our’ end goal in mind – creating what we want to create.
It’s about growing your business in the way that you want to – marketing yourself how you want to, providing the offerings that you want to, taking on the type of clients that you want to work with.
I also see this sometimes when someone has one major client that is 70, 80 or even 90% of their revenue.
Not only is this a dangerous position to be in, but it can end up with your big client dictating the direction that your business takes and designing your business for you.
I do spend a lot of time with clients helping them to ensure that they are creating the business that they want to create and that they are not working to other people’s agendas, to other people’s design.
So ask yourself, are you in control of your business? Are you in control of its direction and its destination? Are you building what you want to build?
If you would like assistance with ensuring that you are working to your plan, please get in touch
