The Fatal Mistake Businesses Make Everyday

If you’re letting deadlines, To-Do lists and budgets rush critical decisions that’ll affect your business, you’re focused on the wrong priorities. 

I’ve been helping one of my clients rework her website content and last week was the major push to get a lot of the content and architecture changes implemented.

It’s all been part of a larger discussion and strategy for her brand, which we both agreed needed a new tagline. I prompted her to do a deep dive around her brand values and attributes and then connect those to a straightforward concept that would strike a chord with her audience. All of a sudden, however, I found myself bombarded with emails containing lists of “variations on a theme” ideas all laced with urgency due to the looming deadline of her designer/web developer’s scheduled updates to her site.

Basically, my client was rushing through a critical element of brand development as though it were just another item on her To-Do list, because she wanted to be sure to add it to her designer/developer’s work order rather than have to pay for a second round of edits. Now, I do understand this on the one hand—money is tight all over. But, on the other hand, if you’re not taking the time you need to make the best, right strategic decisions for your business you’re not investing your money wisely to begin with.

My client, of course, is a very smart cookie. When I pointed this out to her, she immediately realized the error of her ways and took a step back to truly evaluate her options and consider what would work well for her brand, business and audience.

In the end, we quickly hit upon a tag my client loved, and I recommended a fun new way to use the elements of her existing logo on her business cards. Best of all, everything made it on to her designer/developer’s To-Do list within the requisite timeframe without sacrificing the cohesion of my client’s brand or dampening her enthusiasm or excitement for each element that, ultimately, represents her and her business.

If you’re letting deadlines, To-Do lists and budgets rush critical decisions that’ll affect your business, you’re focused on the wrong priorities. Good strategic decisions chart a course for development without impairing your ability to manage day-to-day operations. Alternatively, however, when you’re too focused on the day-to-day that you don’t give yourself time to think and plan strategically it’s hard to create long-term success.

Related Links

• 5 Common Branding Mistakes
• Small Business + Small Marketing = Really Big Losses