3 Things You Said You Would Never Do for Your Business That You Need to Reconsider

Talk is cheap. We like to make grand pronouncements about what we will never do, but nevertheless, we find ourselves doing anyway. On a few occasions, the pronouncements hold true. You might have declared any of the following:

• I will never get another tattoo!
• I will never try sushi again!
• I will never jump out of a plane, with or without a parachute!

You get the idea. Some things really are as bad as they seem to be. It is easy to never try them. Or if you try them, it is easy to never do it again. On some things, it is perfectly okay to stick to your guns.

Not everything is so clear-cut. The fact is, there is nothing noble about keeping your word when doing so causes harm. As you mature, you will learn to stop talking about things you will never do. Life is too complicated and messy for that. And you will realize that some of the things you once inveighed against are actually good things that should be reevaluated. With regard to your business, here are three of these things.

Utilizing or Becoming a Consultant

There are almost as many jokes about consultants as there are about lawyers. None of the jokes are good. In fact, all are fairly cruel and petty. However, consultants and coaches do an important job. If you didn’t go to business school, or if you don’t have several decades of business success on which to rely, you can take the third option and hire a professional business coach to get you past the first few hurdles and on the right path to your best success. 

If you promised yourself you would never hire such a person, it is time to un-promise it. There is no upside to you going it alone when you don’t have the formal education or experiential background to know what you’re doing. You want to feel the sense of accomplishment that comes with having gone it alone. We get it. But hiring a business coach doesn’t mean you didn’t do it on your own. 

Instead, it means you were smart enough to bring in some expertise where it was needed. Successful people surround themselves with people who are smarter than they are. By bringing in a business coach and other consultants, you can do the same for a fraction of the cost of hiring full-time staffers.

TikTok, and All the Socials

It seems like there is a new social media network introduced every day. And every day, the demographic for those networks skew younger and younger. You would be forgiven if you thought TikTok was a social media network for toddlers. You aren’t that far off. Here’s the thing, though: It doesn’t matter. TikTok is a powerful marketing tool for brand success. Lock yourself out of that tool at the peril of your business.

You don’t have the luxury of hating the engine to your success. What TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all the rest of social media have in common is they have more customers than you. And if you want to tap into that huge base of highly engaged people, you have to, at some level, then you need to get on the same wavelength. Why would you ever antagonize people with money who might potentially want to give some of it to you? That makes no sense. 

Lay Workers Off

Sometimes, the only thing that makes sense for a CEO to do is to lay good workers off for the sake of the company. It helps no one if you keep your job but the company goes under. It is like a doctor saying that the surgery was successful but the patient died. As a CEO, you are responsible for all your workers as well as the shareholders. Company layoffs are inevitable. It is generally considered a last resort, but it is sometimes necessary. Sometimes, presidents have to raise taxes. And sometimes, CEOs have to lay people off to save the company.

It is time to reconsider hiring a business coach, doing business on social media, and letting go of good people to save the company. Do the right thing by your business even if it means you have to eat a little crow.