If you compare today with 10 years ago, you'll notice there are a whole lot LESS small businesses around. It's been difficult beyond difficult for many to keep going given the gigantic drop in sales nationwide. Your business dream may have been one of the millions that was shut down.
I know this is the case because so many of the sites I wrote copy, press releases, and articles for are no longer around. These were successful businesses or projects with tons of possibilities.
Now the economy is again rising with new ways to profit and succeed. It may be time for you to breathe new life into your old business. Remember, with so many businesses and websites gone, there is a need for new products, services, and ideas from people with the energy to do it right and make it exciting.
Here are 5 ways to bring back a failed business so it earns strong income in the new economy:
1) Start over from the ground up. Bring back your business organized so it is smaller, cheaper, faster, and able to turn on a dime. That puts you miles ahead of those big businesses that lead your industry. They're stuck with big bills and a big organization that is hard to change.
2) Refocus and go after a different niche in your industry. This may be a new and growing niche that has appeared since you shut down.
3) Organize your business so you can work it part-time. You can work it on evenings and weekends while you keep your day job. Work your business while you continue to run another businesses that is still paying the bills. Plan your new business so you can work part-time even when it becomes successful. You will live a fuller life and won't burn out, giving your business one more reason to keep making good money year after year.
4) Go back over your old email lists, sales orders, and other contacts. Are your old customers still around? Contact them and let them know you're back! Everyone loves to hear from an old friend. When you see a new business take off fast, it's usually because the owner has a following from previous efforts.
5) Breathe new life into your attitude. The recession left many of us with a bad taste in our mouths. Remember how you felt back when you were enthusiastic about starting a new business. Rekindle your enthusiasm. Even if you have to get creative and invent reasons to believe you will succeed, DO IT! Belief is almost always the true key to success.
Because you tried to start a business in the past you now have experience that people can't get any other way. If your business was once successful, you also have experience that very few people have.
Do you have any suggestions on how to find a new niche to focus on? It seems that a lot of time once you get into a certain area it is very difficult to find a new area to focus on. Getting the spark to find that new area is the problem. At least for me. I know there are people out there who need my service but finding them has been very difficult.
ReplyDeletehi Maria, great straight forward logic to your piece. There are many of us who fail to grasp such simple logic in how we look at our business. Business is always evolving as in the fact that our client needs, problems and issues are ever changing. Sometimes we build up a decent client base providing a relatively '' set '' of services or products, then the mistake many of us make is to stop looking outside the loop to check trends connected to the future potential needs of our clients. So I feel you have re-enforced a very important principle for current businesses or those looking to enter a very fast moving new dynamic environment........To add comment for Finaoit above !! It might be prudent to identify your strengths and skill sets and set about identifying how you can match them to the needs of your client base over the next 1/ 2 years.Look at the issues that are ''likely '' to affect them, if you can save your potential clients from encountering problems that are coming down the track towards them, then you have shown them that you care about their business and this builds great trust and long lasting business relationships.
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