Diana Morrison knows all about the importance of spring cleaning. Not the wall-washing, rug-beating kind — but the keeping-your-business-fresh kind that’s infinitely more difficult than scrubbing floors.
“Most of us took a beating in the recession that started in 2008 and 2009,” said Morrison, the founder and owner of Advertising Specialty Services, who spoke to a group of small-business owners and operators Tuesday at the Savannah Chamber Small Business Council’s monthly SMART lunch at the Savannah Morning News.
“Those of us who survived that crash did it by hunkering down and scaling back, accepting flat as the new normal,” she said, surveying the nodding heads in the audience.
“It wasn’t fun, but we made it through.
“So now what?” she asked.
“Now that it’s better, what are you doing about it?”
Everyone needs a plan when things are bad, she said. But it’s equally important to have a plan when things start to turn around.
“Just like when you spring clean around the house, you have to go beyond the surface and look at everything,” she said. “When you spring clean your business, you have to look at who works for you, who your clients are, what your referral base is, what your systems and processes look like.
“Look at your website, your business cards, that 25-year-old logo. Freshen up everything — even if it’s just a minor tweak.”
It’s important to look at yourself and how you run your business as well, she said.
“Valuable employees are the greatest asset a business can have,” she said. “But just because someone has been with you for 10 years doesn’t mean you don’t have to offer training to help them sharpen current skills and learn new ones.
“If you don’t train them and incentivize them, someone else will. You have to keep reinventing yourself to stay fresh and relavant.”
Morrison said she has reinvented herself more than a few times in her 27-year career, admitting she cringes sometimes when people introduce her by telling the story of how she started her business as a 30-something single mother, operating out of the trunk of her car.
“Well, I’m not a 30-something anymore, and it’s been a very long time since my car was my office,” she said. “It was a nice story, but not the way I wanted to be known. That was the first time I realized I needed to reinvent myself, to gather the courage to take myself to the next level.”
Her greatest opportunity came in 2009, Morrison said, when she became just the third woman to chair the board of Savannah’s 200-year-old Chamber of Commerce.
“It scared me to death at first, but I learned and grew so much,” she said. “Then, when my term was over in 2011, I realized I needed to reinvent myself again when I was being introduced as the former chair of the chamber.
“It was time to go back to being me — a small-business owner.”
An audience member asked: “But what if you’re a brand-new business just trying to break into the market, with nothing to reinvent?”
Morrison quickly reeled off a list of “to-dos” for new businesses.
“Decide who you want to be, write it down, tell people who you want to be, show up, do it right, do what you say and don’t give anyone your job — don’t give someone your card and ask them to call you, give them your card and get on their calendar.
“Be responsible. It’s your job to complete that connection.”
If you’re just getting started, she said, it’s important to be who you are, but also be who your customer wants and needs you to be — and stick by your word.
“Most important, if it doesn’t work, spring clean it and start over.”