Letting go. It is hard but yet sometimes easy. This past weekend I found myself unable to escape this conversation as my niece graduated high school and is off to college, her sister turned 16 and within the next week or so will have her permit to drive and my friends’ daughter has been accepted to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. WOW. I thought about my sister and her husband who probably had a million memories of the day their daughter was born as she was standing on stage graduating with honors. Then to look next to them and see their other little girl turning 16 and is learning how to drive. How does this happen so fast and how do you let go and send them off into the world of the unknown? And then to look at my friend Julie whose daughter is heading on a path that is so far away from Las Vegas but yet to a superior education that she could never receive in Las Vegas. How do we know it is right and time to let go?
The “New Business” Mentality
In business we develop a business plan, a marketing strategy and in the beginning promise to stay on course and no matter what we shall not stray. While this is a great strategy what happens when we have something new that is introduced or we find a better way of doing things. Do we let go of what we know and dive in or do we try and make both work?
The Old Way of Doing Business
The old adage of “we have always done it this way” needs to go away. Times have changed and as children get older so does the way we do things. Your business has gotten older but yet your customers may not have. Think about it. Look at brands who have evolved throughout the generations. Everyone evolves and changes but yet we know change is hard. How do we let go of what we know and accept and adapt to a new way?
Accepting Change and Letting Go
In life we seem to adapt to change, albeit it may take some time but we go through the motions and each day we gain a bit of acceptance. In business, we seem to have a different take. We are more apt to abandon a new way of advertising and marketing if it is not providing us with instant or on our timeline results. Really? If you move to a new city do you put a number and timeline on making new friends and if you do not, do you move away? No. But, in business, especially as it relates to social media, we look at the number of followers, leads, leads to sales and put a timeline on it and if we do not meet our goals, we look to abandon and go back to what we used to do. There is money involved in both but yet we seem to look at it differently. If you have a goal to increase the awareness of the company with an objective of 100 subscribers in 6 months and you only get 37, it is a time to look at what you have done or have not done to achieve the goals. If you were running tv, print and radio with a smidgen of online activity, it probably is a good sign to readjust and let go of what you were doing.
Is it this simple? How do we know that it is time to let go and move on to something new? Sometimes it is as easy as looking back at the memories of what we did to bring us to where we are as there is no going back or it is a hard transition into the unknown and the new way of doing business.
Sometimes we just have to throw away those pair of jeans that you wore in high school that you swore up and down would come back in style and still fit.
Is it this simple or is letting go a bigger hurdle?
photo credit: vilma_
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