I’m heading into the sixth year of my company Ignite Insight + Innovation. As usual, I like to start off the year with some reflecting on owning my company and hopefully this is valuable to others as well.
The highlights from this past year specifically:
- The world is tough – economy, fears, etc. And I personally know too many amazingly talented individuals struggling for work – that is insane to me given how incredibly valuable they are. So to have had a year with stable revenue from last year, I will take this!!! There was a point in the summer where despite nine plus sales calls, not one of them closed. And then just when the panic was getting a bit intense, a new client was recommended to me. I’m extremely grateful for having a solid year of work in this world right now.
- New Clients: This year, I was lucky to engage with several new clients. Obviously, this is good for my business as to reduce risk. But truthfully, I enjoy engaging, exploring and helping people with fresh eyes in their situations. This is a win – win!
- Connections: Almost all of my work is from word of mouth and referrals. People will frequently attend a class or contact me for advisor sessions based on someone else and then become repeat clients. I did not know it but building a network of amazing connections ahead of starting my company definitely was a primary factor in successful outcomes.
- Maybe not as much as I would like but I was still able to support people in my network with various roles on engagements throughout the year. Any little bit of sharing can be helpful to them financially and for me mentally getting to be with others.
- With the focus on the branding of “Ignite What’s Possible” and with so much of my content on leadership, I didn’t experience much of the Agile backlash or discussions. This helped in a different way of my diversification – that I will fully acknowledge this was both intentional (slightly by creating focus on keynote speaking assets like speaker reels, etc) and unintentional (coincidence of timing, etc).
- Visibility: I continue to maintain an active presence in conferences, linkedin, newsletters, etc. One, I just enjoy sharing and giving back. But two, it helps me stay visible to people so that when they think of needs, they might think of me.
- Value: Even if everything else is perfect, if what you are hired for… you fail at. The quality is poor. The delivery is not valued. The client is not happy. Your business is done. I continue to level myself up with trainings, with feedback, etc.
What I would have done differently:
- Public Offerings: I knew the numbers for public class signups were struggling but I just kept listing and hoping. By the fourth quarter, I finally got really focused on what I would offer publicly and be very intentional about seeding it first (so not to ever cancel, etc). I wish I would have done this by the end of Q1 – it would have saved me a lot of time and frustration.
- Collaboration: Maybe it’s my five year cycle, maybe it’s because of the world, maybe both and more, but I’m missing collaboration on a frequent basis. I miss being part of a team. I’ve known this was bubbling up in me but I’ve been trying to do little one offs to address. But that’s just not going to fix this desire. I’m now finally acting on several things that will help and again, I wish I would have just accepted this sooner to make decisions appropriately (more news to come).
Starting my own business was something others always asked me about but not something I believed would happen. Now I’m entering year six and thinking bout what’s next… and that is an accomplishment that I’m proud of.
What is a tip you could share for building/maintaining a business?
