You sit down and you create a mission for your business. You put a lot of thought into it. You designed your business around this mission. For quite a while things seemed to be working out well. You went about your day, week, and maybe even year keeping this mission in mind. But there seems to be a shift in your business, and this solitary focus doesn’t seem to be cutting it anymore! You find that your business must change with what your customers are looking for. Or maybe, you need to start focusing on different customers for business to really soar. It’s something that is hard to do, to shift your focus. But what are the ramifications if you don’t? Will your business start to dwindle? Will the finances of your company be in jeopardy? These are huge considerations and something that you must take time to consider; it should never be a snap decision.
Let’s take a writing business for example. Your mission was to service the public, more of a business to consumer business with a bit of business to business sprinkled in. You worked primarily on resumes, and gave advice about college essays. You also did a bit of blog writing for clients, but that was a very small portion of your business. But along the way you had those blog writing customers ask for some help with social media. And in this process you found that more and more people were utilizing online help to write resumes. You continued to pursue the resume market though, after all that was your mission. And you pushed and pushed even though the market just wasn’t there – you spent your time marketing to get resume customers instead of those business customers that were out there probably just waiting for a writer to help them with their work. Here is where a shift in mission makes sense – from business to consumer to business to business, turning the focus to the business writing from the consumer writing. You may still do some resume work, but this may only be a small portion of the overall picture.
Take some time to evaluate your business situation. Is it thriving? Do you still feel a passion for your original mission? If you are answering no to either or both of these questions, it may be time to consider a shift and a change of mission. After all, having passion for your work, along with a thriving business is certainly the goal.