What business are you in?

Remember when you started your business?  What was the first thing you did? Likely got a logo and business cards printed.  But according to our recent speaker  Charmian Christie, we’ve got it all wrong.  Doing the logo is the last thing we should be doing.

Why?  Because first we need to think about what business are we in.  We need to work out what we want to do and even more important, what we don’t want to do, and why.

Charmian was speaking from experience as she shared the dips and turns she went through to get to her current business.   She found that she just kept saying yes to everything that came her way.  And I remember doing that when I had my consulting practice, partly because you don’t know when the next contract is going to come in.  The freelance life can be a feast or a famine.

But Chairman found that she was taking on too much, doing stuff she didn’t really like or work that didn’t sit well with her values.  So she started to make two lists, one of the work she wanted to do, and the other of work that she didn’t.

She also drew up standards for herself in terms of what she would do to promote her brand on social media, and again what she would not do – such as make political comments.  Although as she laughingly acknowledged, these days that is hard, but she has drawn a line in the sand and just won’t go there.

Only after she’d gone through this process did she determine the name of her business, the look and the design of her logo.  Then she had a brand, a brand that she was proud to promote.

She encouraged us all to come up with one word to describe the business we are in.

As your business evolves, know that this can change. 

If you had asked me this question when I first started Company of Women, my answer would have been we were in the support business.  But today… while we still provide support, I think we are moving more towards the confidence business.  In other words, I’d like to think we give you the tools and confidence to succeed, and most importantly, it's success on your own terms.

Let me ask you, what business are you in?