It’s officially spooky szn, which means all things cozy, pumpkin, fall – and spooky. And as a small business owner, what’s scarier than taking a risk? Staying exactly where you are.
To be a small business owner is to be a chance taker. It requires betting on yourself, believing in your ideas, and having faith that things will work out for you and your brand. However, as Q4 rolls around, it can be tempting to go on autopilot and just keep things the same. But with little risk comes little reward, and the real jump scare is looking forward to a year from now only to see you’re exactly in the same spot.
Here, we’ll go over the very real fear business owners have around making changes, signs it’s time to take a leap, and how to know when you’ve officially outgrown something. Let’s dive in.
The fear of change
Many business owners fear making changes that could impact their businesses in the wrong way. It’s a reasonable fear because there’s more on the line: your livelihood, your team’s livelihood, your reputation, your passion, and your success. It’s normal to want to protect what you’ve built and feel anxiety about growing pains and things changing for the worse.
But I’m here to tell you that sometimes, the scarier choice is actually staying exactly where you are: keeping the same rates while your expenses rise, holding onto clients who take more energy than they are worth, continuing to say yes to work that no longer fits your company, letting outdated processes survive. Whether it’s a fear of losing revenue, resorting to the familiar, or keeping things around because that’s just how it’s always been, changing things can be a very scary thing. But not as scary as staying the same. Because entering a new year with the same business model you’ve already outgrown is as spooky as it gets.
Making the leap
If things feel stagnant, inefficient, or stuck, it might be time to face your fears and start thinking about what should change in your business before the year ends. Take the time to review profitability by client and service and look at where scope consistently creeps. Pay special attention to what work your team actually enjoys and does well. Look at where your own time is disappearing, and ask yourself which clients and services you would enthusiastically choose again today if you were starting fresh.
Once you have your finger on the pulse of your business’s inner and outer workings, you can start brainstorming ways to increase productivity, efficiency, and general excitement around the work you do and how you do it. Whether through raising rates, ending client relationships that no longer make sense, tightening scope, changing packages, enforcing boundaries, or simply admitting that your business model is outdated, any change can be a step in the right direction if it’s done with intention, care, and the same drive that made you a business owner in the first place.
Outgrowing your business model
Outgrowing isn’t just about changing things. It’s proof that you and your business are doing well enough to expand, take on more, and level up your model to see even greater growth in the future. But how do you know when it’s time for change?
It’s not always clear, or easy, but you’ll start seeing the signs: the work is no longer profitable, the client relationship requires far more time than the scope accounts for, your team is constantly overextended, the package you built when you were trying to get your first clients no longer reflects your experience, demand, or value.
These aren’t just growing pains. They could point to the fact that it’s time for change, as scary and overwhelming as it might feel.
Growth sometimes requires making decisions that feel uncomfortable before they feel rewarding. You absolutely shouldn’t blow up your business overnight, but you also shouldn’t walk into a new year carrying pricing, boundaries, clients, and systems that you already know are no longer working. You owe it to yourself and your business to try.
In conclusion
This spooky season, the scariest thing for small business owners might be change. But what’s actually scarier is staying exactly the same. Don’t look back a year from now and regret not taking the risk or not taking the leap. Sometimes, the best things come from trusting ourselves and making a change that will bring even bigger growth, bigger success, and bigger results than imaginable.
