Reconnect with Your Business Why: Remember Your Mission

Service-based businesses often start in a fairly simple manner. Someone with a dream decides that they want to put their specific skills to use to benefit a certain set of clients. By striking out on their own, they get to make all the decisions about what services they offer (and don’t offer), who they work with, and when they work. Initially, it feels like freedom. And that might last for a while.

Eventually, though, a healthy business will grow. Growth is great! It means that you made the right call in offering the right skills to the right clients. But growth requires systems and administration. Now, you’re not just delivering your service. You’re also doing accounting, dealing with government filings, managing operations resources, and maybe even building a team of contractors or employees. As you navigate the costs of doing business, you realize that you need to grow your sales and marketing activity as well.

The Burdens of Growing a Healthy Business

At this point, all that freedom you initially got to experience has evaporated into a heavy burden of responsibilities and management. You might be on auto-pilot, getting the day to day things done without thinking much about the future. Or worse, you might be getting burnt out, reversing your dream from growing your business to closing it entirely. You’re suddenly perusing job ads, looking for the least amount of responsibility possible, but also knowing in your heart that there’s no way you could last at something like that. 

As someone who has felt this way as well, I totally empathize with that urge to run away from the stressful burden of running a small business. When I review the huge list of tasks in my project management system, I begin to feel the weight of getting it all done while making sure my team feels happy and fulfilled in their work.

Outside the client projects, I’m also managing taxes, technology, payroll, and insurance for the business. Then there are all the changes in our industry that clamor for my attention. If you are not in a field that is being pressed in on all sides by the AI revolution, consider yourself blessed. In marketing, we are trying to keep up with all the noise while avoiding being fully consumed by this one topic.

There are moments, especially when the pressure is on to implement every shiny new thing, that I have questioned the sustainability of small marketing firms. The idea of running away absolutely enters one’s mind. 

But running away is not the answer! Now, I do believe that there may be times when it really is time to call it quits and move on to the next thing to which God is calling you, but in that case it’s not about running from something but running toward something. However, often in the times of feeling overwhelmed and running on empty what we really need isn’t a change of situation but a change of perspective. 

When you’re stuck in the tasks of running your business without the original excitement that used to keep you balanced, exhaustion sets in. How do you revive yourself so that you can keep your business moving in the right direction? The answer is to change your mindset. Reconnect with your very first Why, and you will regain the energy you need to continue pursuing the mission of your business.

How to Reconnect with Your Business Why

Small businesses really do usually start with excitement. You saw a need among a group of people, and you knew that you had a skill that could help them. By using your skill to make a meaningful difference in their life or business, you felt a great sense of accomplishment. With B2B service-based businesses, that feeling of accomplishment is sometimes exponential, because you know someone else’s business was more successful due to your contribution.

That feeling might still be there in your growing business, but it has been suppressed. It always feels amazing to help someone, but you’re also bearing up under the uncertainties, demands, and disappointments that come with the territory of growth. How do you revive the initial excitement? That is the key to putting the less desirable aspects of running your business in proper perspective. 

These are some questions that will help you reconnect with your Why. I encourage you to sit with these for a while. This isn’t a quick checklist. It’s something to journal about, talk about, and think about during these early days in the New Year:

1. Think about a recent client interaction that made you feel excited or joyful. What did that person say or do that gave you such positive emotions?

2. What was a recent project that was challenging, but that gave you a strong sense of accomplishment when you finished it? Which of your skills did you get to apply?

3. What are some things that your clients are able to do because of the service you provide to them? How are you making them more successful, profitable, efficient, or effective?

4. What part of your job would you do even if you weren’t getting paid to do it?

5. Get together with someone who is just starting out in your field. What are they most excited about? Which of your own old ideas or dreams come back to mind?

These questions can help you reframe how you see your job. They help you zoom out to look at the big picture again, so that you can remember your original goals and mission. The daily tasks aren’t going anywhere, but now you can look at everything with the benefit of experience and a renewed sense of purpose.

To get some inspiration as you answer these questions, check out these resources that I recently enjoyed and helped inspire this blog. If you have a podcast or article to share, please let me know!

• Double Win Podcast: How to love your work without burning out 

• Vocation: Discerning Your Calling - article by Tim Keller

Use Your Why to Identify Marketing Opportunities and More

Reconnecting with your business Why does not just reinvigorate your personal efforts. It also helps you get more focused on the overall health of your business. First of all, when you remember the aspects of your business that fill you with satisfaction, it’s easier to take a critical look at which activities need to be outsourced. Of course, as the person with whom the buck stops, you need to know the details of your business.

But just as you have valuable skills that make your business successful, someone else has valuable skills that can support your efforts. It might be time to outsource things like bookkeeping, payroll, accounting, project management, administrative work, and even some of your operations. Whether this involves hiring employees, engaging contractors, paying other service providers, or finding a tool to help you do it more efficiently, an investment in business administration will make you much more effective in your role as an owner.

The part of your business that has one of the most potential for new life once you get back to the heart of your mission is your marketing. Remember, marketing is how you communicate what your business does for your ideal clients so they can achieve a goal or solve a problem. When you reconnect with the emotions and language of your Why, your marketing will improve. You will gain a new sense of clarity about your target audience and what attracts them to you. Not only does this fire up your passion, but it also allows you to make more informed decisions about which marketing activities should be pursued. Additional marketing benefits include:

• Speaking more succinctly and confidently in networking and business development situations.

• Writing better on social media, your website, sales letters, flyers, brochures, and publications.

• Recognizing client success stories and case studies.

• Generating new ideas about how to meet your ideal clients in their chief pain point.

• Projecting confidence and expertise in discovery and sales calls. 

If marketing your business has become one of the most draining tasks during your growth period, this encouragement should fill you with hope that you can move beyond the current feeling of burnout and overwhelm. Reconnecting with the things that excite you most about your business can be absolutely transformative in getting you to the next growth benchmark.

Remember what I said about outsourcing, though. While marketing your business requires your mind, passion, ideas, and experience, you don’t have to do it alone. Our name, Marketing to Mission, tells you exactly what we do. We partner with business owners to develop marketing strategies that help them carry out their mission.

If your business is growing, and you’re struggling to maintain your passion and your focus, get in touch for a discovery call. Part of our process is bringing you back to your Why so that we can help you design a marketing plan that works best for your mission.