Who Moved My Clients! Navigating Change to Reimagine, Energise & Streamline Business Growth

The pandemic has thrown a few businesses who are finding it hard to find the right routes to success in the new territory. So I wanted to explore the question of change, change in the world around us and change in how we might think and work differently.

Our current times have changed an awful lot of things, and there’s a need to reimagine business, and find ways to energise and streamline business growth.

I’ve taken a bit of time out to reflect back on the last year, well year and a half, nearly two years since the whole pandemic started. I’ve been pondering on the content for our second year of the podcast, about a new book project, and about how I help my clients create space for growth in their business – and indeed in our lives!

I wanted to drop in an article (and podcast episode) where we can explore the question of how we can navigate the way to reimagine, energise and streamline business growth.

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So, today we’re talking about change, change in the world around us, change in what people want, change in our thinking and in our working habits. Not change for the sake of it, but change that enables and empowers.

Whenever I talk to people – clients, friends, family – it’s obvious we’re all terribly busy.

Well, one of the things that preoccupies us lately are the huge challenges and shifts we’re having to go through, adapting to a world where we’re living with Covid.

For some these are major changes both wanted and unwanted – job moves, relationship changes, business pivots. All of these things impact our time, motivation and energy.

Most of us are weird creatures of habit, we don’t like change when it’s not planned and by choice. But we all react in different ways when someone moves our cheese. (If you don’t know what I mean by that, you can get clued in by reading the short book by Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese. Or search on YouTube and you’ll find a little video version.

Who Moved My Cheese a parable about two little people and two mice in a maze, searching for cheese, where each character represents a different attitude towards change.

There’s basically four ways we deal with changes and adapt our strategy and daily habits – and in the book these four ways are depicted by four characters: two mice, “Sniff” and “Scurry,” and two Littlepeople, human metaphor, “Hem” and “Haw.

You get the picture right?!!

It’s a really really good story, and quite a laugh because you can recognise so much of yourself in it, your partner too.

For our purposes in business, cheese represents what we consider success – getting and working with clients. So in the episode title, I’m taking liberty on that book title to explore Who Moved My Clients. Clients haven’t disappeared, they’re not hiding, they just moved … they changed behaviours, priorities and preferences – and so for your business, it’s likely the goal posts changed.

You can always find new cheese, and the minute you start moving on looking, things will get better.

Since I started doing some quite intensive coaching, both on my own Leveraged Business Accelerator program and on the ACES program with Mirasee, it bothered me that I haven’t got the same leveraged set up I once had. My work day isn’t as streamlined and effortless as it once was.

So I’ve invested a fair amount of time over the past year getting everything organised. I’m big on processes and workflows, as I’ve talked about in other episodes and I really do practice what I preach.

But it all takes time, and the process of getting to a place where I feel things are under control and streamlined hasn’t happened in days or even weeks. It’s taken a several months.

This is in part because I’m working with a team, and there are lots of things that grow organically in a company, all fine and dandy until you reach a tipping point.

That’s why I can’t help but dive in and look for ways to do things more efficiently, to create new ways to do things that work better in the new circumstances.

And it’s exactly the same with all the changes pressed upon us because of Covid, directly and indirectly. There are some short term shifts you have to make as well as longer-term shifts. Sometimes the cheese doesn’t suddenly move – you don’t see your lead flow has suddenly disappeared; it can happen more gradually than that.

The question is:

When you really start to notice that the cheese has moved, that you can’t find clients the same way you used to find them, what do you do about it?

Brian Tracy tells a similar if somewhat macabre story about a frog in a pan of water. If you had a pan of really hot water and dropped a frog in it, it would immediately react to the change and jump out.

But interestingly, if you put it in a pan of water that’s just normal temperature and heat it up slowly, it doesn’t jump out when it gets too hot, it stays there and dies. The frog hasn’t noticed the change because it happened gradually.

For example, I have clients with multiple 6-figure businesses very reliant on local networking or events. Some decided to wait it out and hope things changed back again, while others decided to pivot quite hard to online strategies to find clients elsewhere. And many decided to invest in the digital transformation needed to survive and thrive.

So going back to the cheese story, to an extent Covid has moved the cheese, but there’s also a sense that there still is SOME cheese about; they don’t make changes in their habits – essentially, they stay in the pan of water as the heat increases.

Some notice of course and feel more and more stressed about it; they keep looking in the same places, frustrated, anxious and on the brink of giving up the business entirely.

For some businesses, it’s felt a lot more sudden and there’s a sense of panic – who moved my cheese, where are the clients, they’re not where they used to be.

If you’re like me, we all have our routines and habits, and we’re comfortable. But:

When we have to think, act and do things differently, it can create a major moment of panic, struggle or growth depending on your mindset.

What kind of character are you? Do you hem and haw about what to do when something changes or do you sniff and scurry for new ways of doing things?

Do you enjoy and embrace change or dread it and push against it?

Doing anything new brings a whole wave of fresh uncertainty and self-doubt. And at the same time, it can be very energising and create space for growth.

This past year, changes have felt out of our control rather than happening for the right reasons. It throws us off our game. We need to streamline our thinking to navigate our way to new working habits to deal with change in a more positive way, even if we didn’t know what hit us.

Jim Rohn, a renowned personal development coach, talks about two things you can always be certain of in life – opportunities and obstacles. I’ve shared this before, and I’ll share it again because it’s super relevant to living in the real world, our new pandemic-spiked world.

All this is a really important part of why the iSuccess business academy, as indeed this podcast focuses on mindset as a key pillar of success, Mindset, Marketing and Money – they’re all connected.

Being strong in business strategy – alongside action plans that focus on your bottlenecks like digital marketing, sales conversions, enrolment conversations, and online program design – is what make me stand out in both the consulting and coaching work I do.

But the mindset work, thinking differently about how you market and deliver your services, is also a really important part of why my clients get great results working with me.

Business growth doesn’t happen because you found some amazing new marketing tool or tactic. And changing your money model won’t happen if don’t like looking for cheese or clients in new places.

So if you were hoping to see big business acceleration in your business this year and haven’t, or you’ve decided to embrace change and realise you need a coach and mentor to guide and support you through a process to streamline business growth, I would love to hear from you.

Click the link below book a free strategy discovery call.

I’m up for the challenge of helping you find your new cheese – and streamline your way to finding the right clients in all the right new places.

Take the first brave step forward to exploring if we’re a good fit….