(Your business does come with one)

Given my background and what I do for a living, it is hard for me to hear business owners over and over again, each and every day, say, “That is just the way things are” or “It is what it is” or “What can you do about it?”

I will let you in on a little secret: your business does come with a RESET button. Although this chapter might be missing from your business manual, it is there. You do not have to keep doing things the same old way, over and over again, and hope that things will change. I guarantee you, they will not. Hope is not a management strategy.

You control your business. Our businesses are very similar to the computers we use daily. When we originally started them, they came with all the software we needed, and they worked as they were designed to. Over time, we have downloaded cookies, added bloatware, and installed plugins that serve no one. Now, suddenly, it is not working as it used to, it is slow, sluggish, and full of errors.

Well, on the computer, we can push the RESET, and it goes back to the default settings. I am here to tell you that business can work in the same manner.

Sitting on the sideline “HOPING” that the economy will turn itself around so you will be successful AGAIN is, in effect, doing the same thing over and over. Your business, my friend, is in your hands, not anyone else’s. Not your President of the USA or your local Governor, your CEO, your business partner, your employees, or your significant other, or even for that matter, a higher power.

Here is a theory to consider. I call it “Stop-Change-Start.”

Stop – doing what is NOT working. If you are honest with yourself, you know exactly what is leaking revenue and sanity. You know which projects are dead weight. Stop hiring people who don’t fit, stop attending meetings that result in nothing, and stop chasing markets that don’t want you. Just stop.

Change – choose a different path. Do not walk the familiar trail; it will lead you to the same places you have been before. Change means auditing your assumptions. If your strategy hasn’t yielded growth in two years, the problem isn’t the market—it’s the strategy. Pivot, iterate, or pivot again.

Start – acting like the person you aspire to be. If you want to BE different, ACT differently. As William Shakespeare said, and I am paraphrasing—“Life is a stage, and we are the characters in our own play.”

It is time to write your play exactly the way you see or dream it. The business you should have, the business you deserve to have, the “one day, someday” life. You will find that it is magical and liberating to act upon it. Reinventing your business is the ability to dream yourself into your life and then to WILL it into existence, i.e., act into it as if the world were your stage.

Now, here is the brutal reality check: the world does not care if you change or not. If you do not evolve, you will fade into the background as if you never existed, feeding on the memories of what you did NOT do. You will not get a second run, not to my knowledge at least.

We often fear the reset because we are attached to the “sunk cost.” We’ve spent money, time, and emotional capital on the current version of the business, and letting go feels like admitting defeat. Newsflash: holding onto a sinking ship isn’t loyalty; it’s an early retirement. The only true defeat is refusing to adapt because you are too proud to admit you were wrong.

So relax. Your business is like a magnificent, elegant, yet powerful Porsche 911 GT2. After all, it is the ultimate driving machine that, like you, is built to perfection, a piece of art. But even a Porsche runs like garbage if you never shift out of first gear, and it will eventually stall if you never change the oil.

The only way to enjoy it is to drive it as it was meant to be driven, and I will tell you it is designed to be driven with your feet off the brakes. The brakes are the fear, the doubt, the “it is what it is” mentality. Take your foot off. If it gets you a speeding ticket, oh… what the hell, it was probably worth it. Wake up; hit the Reset button. It is never too late, ever. 

Your life is waiting, and frankly, you are already behind schedule. Do not be late!