I was working with a client recently who said they wanted to move from a B2B to a DTC business model. They have a friend who has experienced big growth through DTC and was encouraging them to move in that direction.

When we’re considering significant changes to our business, it’s important to check in on what our objective is. What are we trying to achieve with this business?

I asked: If the business goes exactly how you want, what will it create for your life?

Simplicity and time.

What would your business look like day-to-day when it’s running on a DTC model?

They were able to describe what that could potentially look like.

How is that different from your current day-to-day responsibilities?

That’s when the realization happened. Their current business was providing them with what they said they wanted - simplicity and time. Moving to DTC could mean exciting growth for their business, but it would fundamentally change the objective they have for their business.

It’s great to optimize for growth if that’s the objective. The problem we run into as business owners is that we lose sight of what we want from our business, or worse, never determine what success would look like in the first place.

If we’re not clear on how we’re going to define success for ourselves, we’ll end up using other people’s definitions. We build a business that’s successful in ways that aren’t fulfilling to us. It looks successful from the outside, but it’s dragging us down on the inside. That’s what leads business owners to frustration, burnout and self-sabotage. 

So, how will you define success for yourself? What are you trying to achieve with your business?

If we’re not clear on this, we’ll end up measuring our business with someone else’s ruler.