A new beginning

At the start of a new year, many of us want to make a change. Can we change a bad habit into a good habit? Can we make our diet more healthy? Can we start that exercise program we let slip? Can we start meditating or journal writing regularly?

At the start of a new year, we make resolutions. We will volunteer with a local non-profit. We will be active in a political campaign to get our favorite people elected to office. We will engage with our neighbors and become more a part of our community. We want to change our habits and improve our relationships and have a larger impact on the world around us. There is so much to do!

In business, the beginning of the year is a great time for long-term planning – which essentially means planning for growth or positive change. Our planning process may entail making or modifying a to-do list with key tasks and timelines or creating financial projections. For most of us who run very small businesses, the best thing we can do is sit down (either alone or with a trusted support person) and decide on one specific goal or outcome that we would like to reach by year end. We can then make monthly commitments to get there. We will then be just 12 steps away from a completely different place!

That is the crux of taking action. Create attainable goals, outline the steps that are needed to get there (with realistic deadlines), and hold yourself accountable to the plan.

This planning process is essential when you want to make a big management transition, such as adjusting the ownership structure of your business, adding partners/investors or improving management systems. Whatever the transition, it definitely needs to include creating a realistic plan to reach your goal.

As we move into the year, let’s resolve to make a plan and let’s be sure to hold onto the beginner’s mind. That’s the mind full of possibilities. Setting a goal and a particular path does not mean you have to close yourself off to other directions. Keep your eyes open, connect with others, test your assumptions, learn and be influenced. Here’s to a year of change!

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities…”
– Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki,

Grappling with change

The only thing constant is change. As a small business owner, you know this well. Navigating the ups and downs of sales and marketing trends, hiring employees or letting them go, adjusting your business expertise to match the marketplace. Change is inevitable.

Predictable change

There are some changes you can anticipate, control and prepare for. You may know your product sales will jump during the holidays. You can predict a seasonal spike in sales and be ready with more inventory, increased employee hours, etc.

You can also be the driver of change. You can take a new direction with your business, plan for business growth, or decide it is time for ownership succession or a business sale. You can map out a specific management timeline and take a series of steps over weeks (or even years) to manage the change.

Unexpected change

Then there are the changes that happen suddenly and are completely out of your control. With the coronavirus pandemic and its related public health orders and business closures, you (like many others) may be scrambling to address the impacts on your business while also dealing with the effects to your personal life. You may be feeling out of control and anxious and perhaps at a loss for what to do next.

Here are some simple yet effective strategies that may help during this unprecedented time.

Acknowledge your fears. Think about your fears and write them down. Some of your fears may lose their power once you face them straight on. Recognizing them could lead to ideas for how to deal with them.
Seek support. Reach out to others — friends, colleagues, advisors — who can remind you that you are not alone. They can be there for you with support, empathy and accountability. They may be able to give you a different perspective to help illuminate a path forward.
Be here now. Mindfulness meditation (even for just a few minutes a day) and other awareness practices can help you relax and stay calm. Meditation can help you focus on the present moment and make mental and emotional space for new insights and perspecive.
Remember the past. You have never experienced something like the coronavirus pandemic before. But the way you dealt with past challenges may help you get through this one. What helped in past difficult situations? Did you get support from friends, spend time on self care, actively tackle the problem a little bit at a time each day? Tap into an old practice that worked.
Keep moving. Sometimes the easiest first step is just to put one foot in front of the other. Focus on what you love. Focus on concrete tasks. What you accomplish each day, even if small, will help you deal with the challenge at hand.

Above all, remember to be patient with yourself. Give yourself the permission to wait for solutions to come. You will get through this. We will get through this together.

It takes a beginner’s mind

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

In Japan the phrase shoshin means “beginner’s mind”. According to Buddhist monk and teacher Suzuki Roshi, this is the goal of Zen meditation practice—to have a beginner’s mind, a mind open to everything and ready for anything.

In his book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, he writes, “In the beginner’s mind there is no thought…of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners. Then we can really learn something. The beginner’s mind is the mind of compassion. When our mind is compassionate, it is boundless.”

Keeping a beginner’s mind is at the heart of a successful entrepreneurial venture. For the emerging business owner, everything is in a beginning stage. Everything may seem new and groundbreaking. Yet to develop a unique business model and a specific selling proposition, we need to be creative, respond to a changing marketplace and deal with continual competition. We have to constantly stay open to what we can learn and then put into practice in our business.

For the established business owner, we are now successful to a certain degree and yet always trying to re-invent ourselves and our approach to business. We may have new products, design new services or attract more clients. Perhaps we are attempting to have more sustainable practices or adjusting our management style to be more transparent. Staying open and keeping that “beginner’s mind” can lead to “ah ha” moments, whatever our level of expertise or experience. Through the beginner’s perspective we stay flexible and compassionate—both with ourselves and the stakeholders all around us.

Being a successful small business owner is a blessing. We have a chance to run our business just how we want to do it… not how someone else is telling us to do it. We have a principle, a perspective and a generosity that we want to express. We may be established business owners but we are also beginners. Every day we look at how to adjust to changes and make a statement that will make a difference and have an impact. As a small business owner, we can begin – again and again… and bring the world with us – one business transaction at a time.

Business Exit… have you thought about it?

Many tech entrepreneurs think about their business exit from day one. Acquisition is central to their business model. But most small business owners don’t think about it… they are too busy getting into business! An exit plan should be a part of every entrepreneur’s business planning process — though this is the least understood part of the business plan, and often ignored.

Don’t wait. Think about a business exit now.

No matter how successful you are in business and how much you love our work, you should think about what will happen to your business when you no longer actively manage or run it. At some point down the road—a couple of years or decades from now—you will leave your businesses (or your businesses will leave you). Personal circumstances might change or burn-out could happen. You may be ready to pursue a new endeavor or want to retire. Or someone could approach you about buying your business.

Business exit options

You may not be able to predict your business’ success, your future interests, or the direction of the marketplace. But you can start thinking about the business exit options that could be a good fit for you.

There are a variety of ways to exit your business. You could pass it to a family member, partner, employee or other business stakeholder. You could sell it to an outsider. You could liquidate it and sell the assets, or you could file for bankruptcy.

How will you figure out what is best for you and your business?

Envisioning the future

We encourage you to think about the future of your business and what it might look like when you are not at the helm.

Is your goal to create a legacy business that will last forever?
Do you ultimately want to pass the business on to a family member?
When you are ready to stop running the business, do you hope to sell it?
Would you want the business taken over by an employee(s), partner or other internal stakeholder or would you want to sell to an outside party?

The vision for your business will change as your business develops and circumstances change, but thinking about your business’ trajectory, including your exit, is a key part of strategic planning and business growth. (If you are in a business partnership, it is important that you have an ownership agreement, from the beginning, that spells out what will happen if one or more partners wants to exit the business.)

Planning your transition

When you are ready to think seriously about transitioning away from your business, you need a business exit plan. Just as a good business plan is an important part of business start-up, a good exit plan is key to a smooth transition away from the business.

We help our clients through the transition planning process. This includes identifying or clarifying your motivations and goals, assessing the current strengths and weaknesses of the business, and creating a role transition or business sale timeline with clear benchmarks. We then help business owners stay accountable to their plan.

Our goal is to help small business owners feel ready for their next steps, with a feasible and straightforward plan to guide them through their transition. Learn more about our ownership transition consulting services.

Transitions: A Bridge to Change

March 7, 2013
Profiles
PTA
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The author of Transitions completed his own transition. Dr. William Bridges died on February 17, 2013. He was a pioneer on the work of transitions and transformed the way people think about change. Through his business networks and books (Transitions and Managing Transitions), he had a huge impact on many people, including me. He gave us tools to help us understand and talk about change and he explored how people actually experience change and what they need to get through it.

In 1980 he published Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes. In it he proposed that even though change is situational, transition is psychological and something that needs to be better understood, especially in our fast-paced world. He believed that people experience change in three stages: first as an ending, then as a period of confusion and distress, and finally as a new beginning. He observed that people often try to skip from the first stage to the last but he proposed we spend time in the middle step—or as he called it, “the neutral zone.”

In his obituary in The New York Times on Sunday, Jim Kouzes, the author of The Leadership Challenge, was quoted as saying that “Bill’s major contribution was to give us permission to talk about the pain and difficulty of change and acknowledge that it can be very confusing. Americans have shame around pain—success is somehow supposed to be easy. If you are struggling, it’s as if you’ve failed. Bill… said, yes, you can find real meaning in change but only if you are willing to experience the pain.”

Tom Yeomans, founder of The Concord Institute reflected that “Trust informed Bill’s process and trust is the core idea of self-reliance—trusting your instinct, what you know, your potential to be more truly yourself, trusting the process of change and moving with it.”

For me, Bill Bridges was a mentor. I met him twenty years ago at a networking group and we talked all the way down in the elevator. I told him about my work training entrepreneurs and established business owners and how they struggle with scary transitions in start-up and expansions. He wanted to know more and after two lunches together was very supportive of what I was trying to do to support small businesses. “This is very key work” he said, “so write a book on it.” I did not write a book yet I am so grateful for his support and mentorship as I developed my early consulting practice. It is so often our business friends and mentors that help us through “the neutral zone” on the way to those new beginnings.