When You Need A Makeover
- May 19, 2014
- Posted by: Rochelle
- Category: Fees + Revenue, Marketing + Selling
I’m a sucker for makeover shows.
Not just the ones where they whisk a dowdy woman away and she reemerges as goddess. Or even the home reno from hell (although I love those too).
It’s the business makeovers that are captivating. Because it’s not just a physical transformation—the owners have to commit to deeply emotional change for the makeover to stick.
Enter Gordon Ramsey and his “Kitchen Nightmares”. For the uninitiated, Gordon’s formula is to visit a restaurant encased in filth (usually with a dead rat or two), run by clueless owners serving inedible food—and then turn it around in 60 TV minutes.
Alexa and Randy had one strategy: to put their heads down and work like dogs, hoping their past successes would continue. Praying that doing what they always did would get them what they always got.
If only.
They’d had been running their restaurant for 25 years, and it looked like it. Randy was a hoarder who used every inch of the restaurant to stash his treasures and Alexa was the chef who had lost her fire. They were teetering on bankruptcy, steps away from losing their business and their home.
Even then, faced with losing everything, change still came excruciatingly hard.
The lesson? Do your makeovers in bites vs. gulps.
Adding a new option—a new service, download, program—to your bag of tricks is so much easier than rethinking your whole concept.
An experiment to attract a new type of client beats putting all your marbles into one—declining—revenue stream
Perfecting your messaging and modernizing your website (storefront) trumps having to close up shop and start again.
Just take a look in the mirror. Is your business leading the pack or falling behind?
Don’t be a candidate for a makeover show.
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People delay starting because they want everything to be perfect. Gulp mentality.
Small consistent bites works best for some.
Gulps are good for others as long as they step up and down whatever they want to drink vs. talking or dreaming what they want to consume.
Great add Steve! Waiting for perfect always feels like waiting for Godot…
Good advice, Rochelle. Change of any magnitude can be daunting. I always tell myself, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!” ” 🙂
Love that Lori!
A very timely message Rochelle. I am in the start up stage of doing just this. The makeover will not be easy. But it is necessary. So whether it is a small bite or a large gulp; it will get accomplished. We will come out the other side a much better, stronger company.
The real beauty to the digital age involves the ability to adjust, refocus, implement change in small bites. Previously we would have to make the big change; now we can take those little bites, even in courses from cocktails to app to dessert and even aperitifs. Each course we can savor and enjoy and when we actually finish that meal we will already have achieved some results throughout. Just today I adapted my bio and conformed my Facebook, LinkedIn and Gotham network pages to reflect those changes.
Whenever I work with people on change management I always encourage them to take a phased approach. Beginning by identifying all of the changes they need to make, and implementing a change plan one item at a time makes the process much less overwhelming. Once they have mastered the first change, move on to the next, and so on. Set dates! I also encourage them keep a journal when possible – it’s easy to become discouraged. A journal will helps to track progress, but more importantly, enables them to give themselves credit for all they’ve accomplished.
Welcome Jennifer! LOVE the addition of a journal–great idea…