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If you’ve been in business for a while, you know that there are inevitably ups and downs. You’ve likely experienced seasons where there’s more work than you can handle, as well as seasons where you’re hoping and praying another sale will come in.
While much of this can be handled through effective marketing, ups and downs in business are completely normal. And, according to Jennifer Roach—Founder and CEO of NextGen LLC—you can prepare for your next “S-curve.”
As an experienced entrepreneur, Jennifer now helps other businesses and entrepreneurs envision their destination, unlock their potential, and achieve their dreams through innovation. And, on this week’s episode of Priority Pursuit, Jennifer is doing just that by sharing her experiences and advice on how to handle ups and downs in business.
Why is innovation important for small businesses?
The pace of innovation and change is accelerating. Even the world and the way we live are changing rapidly—from geopolitics to how we interpret data.
Part of innovation, according to Jennifer, is understanding these constantly changing trends and accepting them. Once you’ve done that, you can consider how your business and the work you’re responsible for can continue to grow and reach the levels you are hoping for within that change. Otherwise, you’ll likely be stuck promoting products and services consumers are no longer looking for.
But, innovation doesn’t just influence what work you do. It also plays a major role in how you do it. Even just a few years ago, most business and work was done face to face. Now, there are so many more remote and hybrid options, which change how we view different positions, what work needs to be done, and how it should be completed.
Overall, there will always be changes in what your work is and how you do it. Jennifer states that breaking that down and being innovative in how you explore is what will create new opportunities moving forward. You need to stay on your toes to stay relevant and recognize that things have changed a lot for your target consumer or customer so you can meet them where they are today.
How can small businesses stay innovative?
In order to stay ahead and keep moving your business forward, Jennifer recommends a few tactics and exercises you can do for your small business.
Be aware of trends.
The future is happening now. There are spots in the world where something is happening that could disrupt your business. Keep up on trends and information about your industry and adjacent industries. The more you know, the more you can be aware of and prepare for.
Have a “board of directors.”
Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean having a paid board of directors. You just need to gather a group of people you can go to to ask a question or bounce an idea off of. These individuals could be mentors, advisors, or just people you’re comfortable working with as a sounding board. Essentially, they should be people you value and who can challenge the way you think.
Dare to dream.
It’s easy to become lost in the activity cycle of making money and running your business the way you always have with no real thought to improvements and innovations. But you need to allow for time and space to consider how you will make money in the future.
With this in mind, Jennifer recommends carving out some time to take a step back and look at the big picture for both the future and the present using the blue-sky thinking approach.
Take a second and relax. Imagine you are lying in a field and watching your thoughts go by like clouds in the wind. Now consider the future. Where do you want your business to be in the next five or ten years? What do you imagine? What do you see happening? What are some services or products you want to be offering?
It may help if you consider where you want to be personally as well. Do you want to have more flexibility in your schedule so you can spend more time at home with family?
Perform a self-assesment.
Now, if you don’t see much in that exercise, that’s okay. For some people, focusing on the here and now is more important. Instead of considering the future, take a look at where you are now. What’s your self-assessment of your business? What’s working? What isn’t? Think about what your key issues are and if you have a plan to take care of them.
No matter which prompt you use, be sure to jot down what you think of. Your thoughts may form single words, pictures, diagrams, or sentence fragments. No matter how silly or nonsensical they may appear, it’s important to write them down. Don’t feel like you need to make sense of all of it now, simply focus on capturing the ideas.
The goal of these exercises isn’t to create a business plan for the upcoming year. You’re just looking to get your ideas and potentially valuable information out of your head. Oftentimes, you can find your next solution out of your musings if you take the time to be fully transparent with yourself about the state of your business and where you would like it to go.
What is an S-curve?
S-curve is the name given to a mathematical logistic growth curve, which is often found in nature. It’s a mathematical model that’s used to predict growth rates, specifically in yeast, and other biological processes. As the name suggests, it tracks growth and decay in an S-like shape with a steep climb, eventual plateau, and final decline.
For some time now, management professionals have been applying S-curves to innovation cycles to predict things like market growth and saturation. However, it’s always an approximation. It’s a tool used to somewhat predict or explain a potential future, but there are also a lot of factors that play into it.
One element is the growth, or the steep beginning of the S-curve known as the ascent. This is where you’re growing quickly and things are taking off. You’re likely selling more than you have the capacity or time to produce.
Then there’s the plateau. This is when things start to slow down, flatten out, and become predictive. Usually, this marks when you’ve reached market saturation and realized things are probably not going to sell above a certain amount with the way you’re currently doing things.
What comes after that is the descent. In nature, that’s when the S-curve dies off and things begin to slow and shrink. One of the great teachers of innovation theory and disruptive innovation was Clayton Christensen from Harvard Business School. He had many theories, but one of his key observations was that businesses can be at the peak of their success and profitability just before they fail.
The reason behind this is the daily work of running a business leads to incremental decisions, which tend to optimize the business as it is today and leave little room for thinking about how the business could or should be in the future. Avoiding this takes a disciplined approach to “do both”—meaning manage the business you’re in while you also chart a path to the business you’d like to be in down the road.
While this may sound intimidating, S-curves are nothing to be afraid of. They are a natural situation that happens to all businesses from time to time.
How can a small business manage an S-curve?
When it comes to managing an S-curve, the main focus is to maximize the growth and sustain it for as long as possible. Likewise, you want to reach a higher saturation rate—meaning have bigger or more clients—and hold it for longer.
Jennifer compares managing S-curves to surfing. In order to catch as many waves as you want, and eventually a big wave, you need to dedicate time to training. Quite a bit of time is spent preparing, increasing skills, testing control strategies, how well you can maneuver, and gaining muscle memory so that when you catch a big wave, you are prepared to succeed.
Managing S-curves in business is very similar. Just as you can add surf training and preparation to your daily routine, you can add preparing for S-curves and planning where you want your business to go into your daily functions.
With this in mind, creating a new S-curve requires a combination of deep diving into your current business, reflecting on changes you’d like to make, building in the blue sky visioning work, and studying market trends and landscape analysis. It’s the full check of where you might need to be in the future—both the opportunities you’d like to harness and the problems you’d like to solve.
Be sure to listen to this whole episode (at the top of the page or wherever you listen to podcasts) to hear more about Jennifer’s experience with how to handle ups and downs in business. If you’d like to connect with Jennifer, you can visit NextGen LLC’s website at www.nextgen-llc.com or find them on LinkedIn or Facebook.
Links & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Visit NextGen LLC’s Website
- Learn More About Blue Sky Thinking
- Receive 50% Off Your First Year of HoneyBook
- Learn More About Treefrog’s Small Business Marketing Resources & Services
- Join the Priority Pursuit Facebook Community
- Follow or DM Treefrog Marketing on Instagram
- Follow or DM Kelly Rice on Instagram
- Follow or DM Victoria Rayburn on Instagram
The Priority Pursuit Podcast is a podcast dedicated to helping small business owners define, maintain, and pursue both their personal and business priorities so they can build lives and businesses they love.
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