What Would You Do With Your Business If You Knew You Couldn’t Fail?

Here’s a question I think every business owner should ask themselves occasionally:

What would you be doing with your business if nothing were standing in your way?

Not what feels sensible. Not what you think you should be doing.

Not what your current website says you do, or what your existing clients know you for, or what you’ve been doing for the past five years.

If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you actually want this business to become?

• Who would you be working with?

• What would you be selling?

• What would you want to be known for?

• And perhaps most importantly: how different is that from the business you’re presenting to the world right now?

Sometimes your business moves faster than your brand

This is something I see all the time.

You start a business offering one thing to one type of client. You take the work that comes your way. You learn. You get better. Your confidence grows. Your expertise deepens.

Gradually, you start to see where your best work happens.

There are certain clients you want more of. Certain projects you wish you could stop doing. Certain parts of your work that people particularly value you for.

But your brand often stays exactly where it was.

Your website still talks about everything you can do rather than what you really want to be hired for.

Your messaging is broad enough to include everyone.

Your visual identity still belongs to the version of the business you created when you were trying to get established.

And before long, there’s a gap between the business you have and the business you want.

The interesting bit is what happens when you remove the practicalities

When I ask business owners what they want next, the first answers are often very practical.

• “I need more clients.”

• “I need to sort out my website.”

• “I need to be more consistent on LinkedIn.”

• “I need to do more marketing.”

But those are actions. They don't tell us where you're actually trying to go. So try removing all the constraints for a minute.

Imagine the enquiries were coming in. Imagine you didn't have to worry about whether people would pay.

Imagine you weren't concerned about alienating some of your existing audience.

Imagine you weren't comparing yourself to everyone else in your industry.

What would you choose?

That's usually where the more interesting answers start appearing.

• Maybe you’d work with fewer clients at a much higher level.

• Maybe you'd stop selling the service that takes up most of your time.

• Maybe you'd move away from the audience you started with.

• Maybe you'd package your expertise completely differently.

• Maybe you'd finally position yourself as the expert you've quietly become

Your answer tells you something about your brand

I'm not suggesting you abandon half your business tomorrow because of a thought experiment. But I do think the gap between your answer and your current reality is worth paying attention to. Because your brand shouldn't only explain the business you've already built.

It should help you build the one you want next.

If you want to work with more established clients, does your brand give them a reason to see you at that level?

If you want to be known for one particular area of expertise, is that obvious within seconds of landing on your website?

If you want to charge more, does your positioning help people understand why you're worth more?

If you want to move away from certain work, why is it still taking up half your homepage?

Sometimes the reason a business feels stuck isn't because the owner doesn't know what they want.

They know perfectly well.

They just haven't given themselves permission to build around it.

So, try this…

Forget your current website. Forget your competitors. Forget what you've always done.

Forget, just for a moment, what feels realistic. And ask yourself:

If I knew I couldn't fail, what would I want this business to look like three years from now?

• Who would you work with?

• What would you sell?

• What would people come specifically to you for?

• What would you stop doing?

• What would you charge?

• What would you want someone to say about you when they recommended you to somebody else?

Write the answers down without editing them into something more sensible. You might find you've just written the beginnings of your next brand strategy. Because sometimes the question isn't “How do I make my current brand better?”

It's:

“What does my brand need to become to support where I'm going next?”