Ben's Unbearable Business

Years ago I was working with a business owner (we’ll call him Ben) who lived in a small town. He ran an IT support business, and he was deeply unhappy about it.

The business had an admirable turnover. And Ben had a steady stream of customers. But it was missing two really important elements for a small business.

First, while it had a good turnover, it wasn’t very profitable. The business mainly did work that was, by its very nature, low-margin busy work. Secondly, this sort of work was stuff he didn’t like to do. Ben felt trapped and had no idea how to resolve it.

We managed to get him his joy back (because who wants to be in a business that makes you miserable. We also helped him make more money). I’m going to explain what we did, but first it’s worth talking about how he got into this problem in the first place, as the accidental journey to business despair is all too common.

When Ben started his business, he offered the services he really wanted to do. His joy was going into businesses and helping them with working out what computer and IT systems they’d need, and then installing them. He wanted to become their tech guy if any issues came up. He had big plans, and the town he lived in was big enough to support them.

While he grew, Ben started to take on little bits of work, offering simple IT fixes to anyone who needed them. The investigation of the problem often took far more time than people would pay, so he started to trim off the actual time he was taking to make it feel more palatable. 

Ben found that flat-rate offers were far more appealing to these little customers, and they were also easier for him on an accounting basis. So he created a deal, and because his work with the bigger clients was still building and he had capacity, he created an advertisement to get more of these deals. He changed the messaging on his website. He made signs in his workshop and started to talk about the cheap offer to everyone to attract more of these little customers. 

In his head, he was creating a short-term fix. In reality, he created a long-term problem. 

I met Ben four years after he’d made that call. He wasn’t working with any of the businesses he’d set up to serve. Instead, his days were filled up to bursting with low-paid, stressful, busy work. He wanted to change, he was trying to change and he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t getting the right customers.

The first misstep was living in  the panic of “doing things in the meantime.” I’ve done it myself. When you hit a little dry spell it’s easy to panic, and think, “I’ll just take this little bit of work on to keep me covered.”

Sometimes we do need to do something for survival, but we need to keep it TOP SECRET. 

Don’t be tempted to make it a regular offer. Don’t add it onto your website as a service. And don’t make all your testimonials come from people you’ve done this work for.

What You Sow You Grow

Ben unintentionally grew a business from the wrong seeds. When I went on his website, it was all about his special offers.. His reviews on Google were also for the same sort of work, and his social media posts mainly covered this work too.

Somewhere between “I’ll just take this to tide me over” and “I’ve got a business I hate” there were many little slips into changing his focus publicly. He was known as a fix-it guy locally, and because this took up all his time, he couldn’t get the work he really wanted. He had to keep pushing the low-value work to keep the cashflow going.

Sometimes the crop you’ve produced is completely wrong. And it’s like a weed, suffocating your core product or services. It will not allow you to grow the way you planned.

Burn the Fields

Sometimes to grow you've got to burn away what's there first. This is risky if you've got a business just barely getting by.

Ben had realised that some of the work he wasn't doing wasn't even profitable, so we encouraged him to say no to it. The extra time could be used to build the business he wanted.

He was even able to make a little from this decision, selling his list of customers to a local business that loved doing what he hated. He carefully managed his transition, explained to his customer base that he was only going to focus on working with companies to solve their IT systems and he was away.

He also managed to pick up two clients during this transition. Several of his customers had no idea that he could work on bigger projects. They recommended him to the decision-maker at their work, and within a few weeks, he was in bliss working on two large projects. 

Not everyone gets a lucky catch that fast, but often the very act of closing a door with purpose and announcing another door is opening up can lead to new ideal work from your existing community. 

Rachel Klaver is a marketing strategist and owner of Identify where we help small business owners develop a marketing strategy and action plan for their business. This newsletter is based around ideas in her new book BE A SPIDER, BUILD A WEB. (launches May 2022). You can also check out her podcast here