Michelle Coyle is CEO of The Political Business Institute and president of BGSD Strategies. Have a question about your business? Email her directly at mcoyle@politicalbusinessinstitute.com and she’ll answer them here.
Q: We’re looking to expand in 2024, but are debating whether that means just taking on more work or hiring additional staff. We’re concerned about the doing the latter because we don’t want to lay anyone off after November.
A: I think growth in 2024 is about having your capacity lined up. Nobody likes to turn down business because you don’t have the capacity to take it on, or even worse, to take the business on that you don’t have the capacity to take on because then you’re getting into kind of an integrity question. From the tone of your question, it sounds like integrity is a value for your company.
Now, I know it’s also scary to be staffing up when you don’t know if the money’s coming in, or when or where or from whom. And it depends on who raises what and who wins their primary and all of that. One strategy that could help you is contractors or partnering with other firms. Really, this is where you can lean on your strategic partnerships.
There are smaller firms out there that are super happy to take overflow work and plug in with you and white label for you. Now is a great time to get that lined up. When feeling out a partnership, you can say, ‘hey, if we get slammed, if we get surged, can we reach out to you for this kind of work?’ The answer will likely be ‘yes.’
Q: I’m here to admit that I’m a bit of a control freak and have had a hand in every aspect of building my business. But I’m starting to realize that it might be holding me back. Any advice for how to let go?
A: We want to do everything ourselves. We want to be the hero. And we get addicted to this dopamine hit of, ‘Oh, man, we were in a cashflow crunch and then I brought the big contract in and I saved the whole firm.’
Or, ‘Look how smart I am. And look at how I decided to create this new service line and look how well it panned out.’
That’s great. You’re very smart, and I’m sure you do a lot of smart things.
But when you’re in the thick of it, especially emotionally, you can get really shut down in a way that makes it hard to make rational, logical decisions. Letting go needs to start with managing your own emotions and staying in a rational headspace.
Ultimately, if you can’t let go of that control and start building a business that can run without you, you’re not really building a lot of value into your business. You’re valuable as a hire for somebody else. Maybe your book of business and your contacts are valuable, but your business itself is not particularly valuable unless and until it can run without you and the company potentially acquiring your business can plug your business operation right into theirs and it’ll run.
The more seamless that is, the more valuable your business is.
