Finishing Strong
With the beginning of a new year, many of us are still reflecting on the past year and what we’ve accomplished, with hopes that we were able to finish it out strong and tie up any loose ends. End of years (and decades!) are great times for that kind of assessment. But other endings occur in the life of an entrepreneur all the time. We end relationships with vendors and contractors, we end programs, we end promotions, we complete projects (hopefully!!). Some of the endings can feel traumatic, while others feel more like the satisfying tie of a bow on a gift. In 2019, I experienced one of the bow-tie endings and want to break down some of the lessons I learned as I wound down the year.
The backstory -
This client’s business was growing when we started together. I started working with her to get some processes nailed down as she was growing her team and needed to get some procedures out of her head and into a format her team could follow. We started with a basic retainer of a chunk of hours she would use when needed. I began running out of those hours quickly, and we re-negotiated a flat fee per month. Then the business grew again and we re-negotiated again as her needs and the business needs continued to stretch. A point came early in 2019 when we both could see that the level of service being offered was not matching up to the pace of the growth of her business. So we both agreed that she needed a different solution from what I could offer and we got to work, along with a colleague who specializes in small business operations, finding her a dedicated assistant. In the fall of 2019, the successful handoff occurred and we are all extremely happy with the results of our efforts.
4 Keys to Finishing Well
Communicate Often and Early - In the corporate world, the two-week notice is fairly standard practice, but when you’re dealing with small businesses, I’m a big fan of a longer lead time. As an entrepreneur, your network and referrals are super important and maintaining relationships with clients and contractors once the work is done is invaluable. In this particular case, the rumblings of transition started months before we officially made a plan, but when it came time and I knew I needed to give my client a deadline because of other things going on in my business and life, I communicated it to her right away. That communication allowed us all to keep moving forward with the same goals in mind.
Seek the Win/Win - Some friends and colleagues asked me why I felt the need to transition this client instead of just increasing our engagement with her and pulling in more subs to do the work. While I think that is an excellent scaling strategy for my business in general, it just wasn’t the right thing for this client. As an ally for small business owners, I’m always looking for the win/win situation. I don’t believe the lie of scarcity - that there’s not enough to go around that if someone else wins, I necessarily lose out. Having an abundance mindset in this case allowed my client to find a new team member with a different set of skills that match directly with what she needs, allowed me some space in my business roster for new work that better fits my team’s skill set and availability, and introduced me to several new people I may get to work with more in the future. Transitions can be really tricky with minefields of ownership and ego all over the place. The principles of abundance and a win/win mindset helped to frame the way I moved forward with the training and the transition of duties and procedures to my client’s new team member.
Document and Plan - One of the most important practical things that helped guide this transition was the time I spend with the operations consultant and with my client to create a comprehensive hiring AND TRAINING plan for the new hire. We laid out expectations and requirements and deadlines and had everything in shared documents and spreadsheets. I’m sure we missed some things, but even then - we all knew where the holes were because of the pre-work we did to get everything down. One of the traps I see entrepreneurs getting into is thinking that because something comes naturally to them, others will also intuitively know how they want things done. Having this kind of mindset just leads to confusion, lots of churn, and frustration on all sides. Part of my work with this client had been to streamline all the company procedures in ways that were easier to understand and communicate - and we still found in the transition that there were many items still stuck in my head or in my client’s head that needed to be written out. Skipping this step is very tempting as it just seems like a huge time suck. I’m so grateful that my client saw the value in investing in the training and documentation piece. If she hadn’t been, I believe the transition would have been rockier. This kind of investment works! After our pre-arranged training times, I believe I got one email question and maybe one phone call after the transition. (This, of course, speaks probably as much to the caliber of the person hired as to our transition plan! She’s amazing!)
Let Go of Perfectionism - The hardest thing for me personally was to hand off projects that weren’t quite done yet! I so wanted to just give the new hire all perfectly wrapped procedures and documentation and of course we didn’t totally hit that mark. I am a recovering perfectionist and I had to use a ton of restraint to not spend tons of time finishing things up and adding notes to documents that weren’t where they should have been and on and on. I learned to just say - “here’s what we were going for - we’re almost there - here are the people who can help get this across the finish line - etc.” It was still painful, but part of my learning process as a business owner has been to realize that there’s really never going to be a time when all the packages are tied up neatly. We have to just keep moving forward, fixing things as they come and undoing other things when they outlive their usefulness.
I don’t know what you needed to do to close out last year well or what endings you may be facing in the New Year. What I do know is that the endings are inevitable and we all need help to get through them with grace. I’m grateful to Katy for her leadership through the transition, to Alex for being an amazing co-pilot, and to Elizabeth for accepting all my messily wrapped packages and continuing to help Listed Treasures soar!
Cheers to a New Year!