Last week Rebecca Brunke shared her story with us about taking chances and going after what she wanted. It takes a lot of courage, and we love hearing stories from women who did just that. Want to know what else we love, though? When women can take a step back from what they are doing and ask themselves “Is this still what I want!?!” 

As business grows – and as we as individual people grow – change happens. Our interests change, our values change, or maybe even our skill set change. Businesses evolve all the time, yet for many of us solopreneurs and small businesses, we feel like change is a bad thing. “If I make this change, does it mean I’m giving up on what I’m doing right now!?!” 

Um, no. It means that you’re open to taking an opportunity. 

Now, we’re not suggesting changing just for the sake of change. Rather, we’d hope that you have spent time evaluating your business, acknowledging what’s working, what’s not working, determining if this is still something you want to do, assessing your ability to be open to taking on new challenges…all those important things. 

For right now, we’re going to assume you’ve done the self-reflecting and business evaluation and you’ve got an idea right in front of you that is going to bring change to your business. And you are ready to charge full steam ahead with it! 

But how do you make sure that change can happen successfully? After all, you’ve spent this long building your business and now you’re about to flip it all around.  

Take Your Time In Making Change 

We know that the excitement of it all is just too much to handle but trust us when we say take your time in making change. Slow and steady wins the race. Making a change in your business will likely have a bigger ripple effect than you realize, so wade into the waters and feel your way out rather than making a big jump. 

Get Clear on What You Want 

Take the time to understand what it is you really want to happen with this change. Set out your goals, your priorities, and figure out what you need to do in order to make things happen. While you don’t need to know 100%, you have to have a pretty clear picture to help you know what you are working towards. 

Do Your Market Research 

Just like when you started your business, you need to make sure there is a market for what you want to be doing. Is your current target market the same market for your new idea? If not, you’ll need to identify just who your target market is and figure out your best approach for connecting with them. 

Shout It From The Rooftops 

Tease them, please them, and tell them. Then do it again. Don’t be shy in telling people that you’re making a change…get people excited with you! Make a big deal that changes are coming to your business however you can. Engage stakeholders, collaborators, audience, current and past customers, friends, family members, and pretty much everyone in your network. Because if they don’t know that change is happening, how can they tell someone else!? 

Roll With It 

Whatever actually goes as planned? Chances are likely you are going to learn lessons, experience hiccups, and maybe even fail at some things. All of which will only help you in reaching your goal of making change in your business more successful…as long as you learn to roll with it. 

Change doesn’t have to be scary. It can be exciting, and it can even be exactly what you need. If you are thinking about a change in business, don’t quite throw caution to the wind, but dive in on exploring if it’s the right thing for you! You’ve already taken at least one courageous step by setting up a business, what’s one more!? 

Speaking of change…we’ve got one coming to Define + Design that we’re super pumped about. We love working with our clients and helping them gain the confidence and clarity not just in their brand and social strategy, but in their business too. We love it so much, that we’ve been working on a new idea to help more women get this confidence and clarity so that they can rock their businesses with success. Check out our Instagram because we’re dropping lots of hints over there, but we’ll be sharing more details here in September!