As a business owner, I worry about a lot of things. I worry about things that are affecting my business…I worry about things that are affecting my clients’ businesses…I worry about things that affect my team and their families.
After over a decade of experience, I have discovered there are things that you should worry about and focus on and things that aren’t worth the mental gymnastics. Not only should you block out the things that you can’t change – such as the political climate or the weather, but you need to work on focusing on the things in your business that really matter. Focus on what won’t change.
For my family’s business, Young’s Jersey Dairy in Yellow Springs, Ohio, there are a few things that have been staples of our business model throughout the nearly 70 years of being a customer-facing business. Ice cream, family fun, feeding the goats, and (more recently) deep fried cheddar cheese curds are just a few. These are things that require the most focus and effort to ensure that the quality doesn’t fall off in our customers’ eyes.
As for Shout It Out Design, we have three main value propositions for our clients:
- Marketing knowledge and assistance with marketing efforts,
- Technology to build websites, automate e-commerce and other related digital tasks,
- Stellar customer service.
Two of those things (marketing + technology) are always evolving, no matter what we do. It is our job to stay current on the trends and what is best for our clients, while recognizing we don’t have control over what the overall trends or statistics will be. But the one thing that won’t change, and that we can influence, is our customer service.
Making sure our team is always going above and beyond for our clients is one of the main reasons that our clients don’t trade us for one of the many MANY other digital marketing agencies out there. We care about our clients’ successes, we speak plainly to them and are always there when needed. This is Shout It Out Design’s “Thing That Will Never Change.” It’s a core principle of our business and if it goes away, our clients will too.
Caring for our clients and providing excellent customer service is a differentiator that our clients have told us again and again is the reason they love us and continue to trust us with their digital presence. And our goal is to wake up every day and do just that.
I challenge you to block out the white noise of headwinds that aren’t integral to your business’s success. Find the thing(s) that always matter for your business, the things that cannot ever change. Once you’ve found those things – invest the time and efforts of your team to ensure that they never do.
