The 5 aspects to a successful ending
Scaling a business involves many endings and new beginnings
Welcome to a free edition of Start Up To Grown Up: Your source for ideas, insights and tactics to take back control of your business and scale it sustainably and profitably by Heather Townsend, award-winning author of The Accountants’ Millionaires’ Club and Founder of The Accountants’ Growth Club.
Transition is messy.
There is the realisation that change is happening whether or not you’ve instigated it.
And boy, change is happening to me.
At the time I started writing this article, my baby was due to leave the nest in 3 agonising weeks. It was 4 agonising weeks when I started this substack. It doesn’t feel any less agonising. I want to cuddle him up close and not let him go. But go he must.
Plot twist: He’s now at uni and the stress is lifting…
In 12 months my husband and I will be empty nesters and our plans for life after children will be set in motion.
Over the last 6 weeks I’ve been thinking about what that life needs to look like. I am being drawn to a more simple and less busy existence. That’s both personally and professionally.
My business life accidentally started with writing front and centre. I’m excited about the possibilities of going back there.
How I spend my time is going to change.
The future looks like spending far more time with my aging parents. They are the catalyst for the focus of life after children. But being near to them means spending time on the upkeep of a huge garden. Our postage stamp of a current garden will fit into the new garden many, many times over.
In a strange way I am looking forward to tending the garden and growing my own fruit and vegetables. There is nothing quite like the intense taste and texture of homegrown produce. I’m already visualising what produce we will grow. Who needs regular gym or exercise classes when you have half an acre of garden to tend to?
Then how will my day look? I like the idea of planning in a break or 2 to spend time being around my parents or having a potter around the garden. Where we live now is so overlooked there is no pleasure pottering around our garden.
These are the thoughts going through my head right now. It’s a classic case of being in transition. So, let’s look in more detail about this thing called transition.
Transition is a process
Whether you decided to trigger the change or it was forced on you, you need to go through a transition. This transition as William Bridges in his book ‘Transitions’ describes is process-orientated rather than goal-orientated, and ‘internal’ rather than ‘external’. It’s about letting go of beliefs, behaviours and identities that are no longer needed or serve you as you move into a new phase. The first part of transition is the ending part.
Scaling a small business is a journey of endings and new beginnings. There are the new beginnings you trigger, such as hiring someone to take work off your plate. And the new beginnings someone else triggers like a key employee leaving. Or a major client taking their business elsewhere.
Let me give you a real example in my business life. Our head of marketing sadly left. As we started looking in the details and what had actually been happening we realised that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. There was a lot of stuff that had flown under the radar and not got done.
Of course, we could have gone out and hired someone into this position. But we stopped and took a data-driven decision. This meant we restructured their responsibilities and I ended up being given back my Director Of Marketing responsibilities.
At first, I went in all guns blazing, trying to do everything they used to do. What I failed to do was the internal work needed to see exactly who or what I needed to be to make this work. I.e. the soul searching and processing part of being in transition. What behaviours or beliefs or identities did I need to let go? How did I properly need to ‘end’ what went before in order to move forward?
It left me burnt out within 8 weeks. In fact, at the time of writing, I am coming to the end of a break to overcome the fatigue that was overwhelming my energy levels and inflicting damage on my mental health.
Who triggers the change really matters
Either you fire the starting gun to start a change or someone else does. The person who has fired the gun really matters. If you’ve taken the decision to start the change, then this can feel like a positive step forward. Perhaps the light is finally showing at the end of the tunnel? Or you can see the jigsaw pieces coming together as you implement your Growth Plan. However, the temptation is to not do the internal work to manage the ending in order to have a successful new beginning.
If the change is forced upon you, this can be initially very distressing. In fact, you may go into denial and refuse to accept the train that is hurtling down the tracks threatening to run you over or derail your growth plans.
In both situations, you do need to navigate the transitional phase. When the change is instigated by you, you may not see the need to spend too much time doing the internal work of transition, particularly the need to embrace the ending. After all, you pressed the go button. It should be all steam ahead? Shouldn’t it?
Shouldn’t this be easy?
You’ve put your Growth Plan together. Focused on the next big step needed to move things forward. It should now be just a case of implementing your plan.
Therefore, why can it sometimes feel so hard?
Sometimes, we’re caught off guard when we don’t expect or envisage the ending to be challenging. After all, we said we wanted this… We started turning the wheels to get things into motion. As we move from comfortable into uncomfortable unknown territory, our brain starts to seed doubt. Do you really want this? Why don’t you stay where you are?
My belief is that alongside our brain trying to keep us in our comfort zone, we often have to address that our identities are changing. Where once you may have been seen as that great lawyer, accountant, creator or coach. Now you need to embrace a different identity and set of behaviours. For example, who doesn’t get a dopamine hit every time you do some chargeable work? Or bring in a new big juicy client? These beliefs and behaviours need to change if you are to successfully scale. It will need to be others who eventually take over your ‘doing’ and ‘managing’ responsibilities.
But how often do you do that deep, internal work?
Particularly when you are frantically busy dealing with all the messy bits of starting to move forward into the new way of doing things.
How to do the internal work to move forward quickly?
If you are reading this you are probably like most small business owners I’ve worked with. You’ll be keen to understand how to do the internal work quickly. To get it over and done with to move forward.
Sometimes, there is no quick way.
Bridges in his book Transitions, suggests there are 5 aspects to the endings process.
Disengagement
This is when you typically feel an inclination to move away from familiar routines and activities when experiencing change. For me right now, with my eldest shortly due to leave home, that has led to stopping my regular Wednesday night pilates class. For the employee who has decided to seek a new job, you may notice their performance drop as they go through this stage.
Or you may feel a disengagement with your love for your business. You wouldn’t be the first or last business owner who has secretly wondered whether all they have done is built themselves a low-paid job that they are now trapped into.
Dismantling
This is often where the deep work happens. It is where you strip back your ties or connections to the identity, person, or relationship that you’ve lost, or possibly the business you have built. For example, can it still be your baby if you are starting the journey to get your business ready to exit?
Disidentification
This is where you need to look at the roles and identities you were occupying and what may need to be reclassified. As both my children enter adulthood (as defined by the law in the UK), I need to stop talking about them as the kids. They are now my adult children or grown-up children. They are adults in their own right and need to be seen more as peers than people I need to carefully nurture and raise to be confident, grounded, happy, and successful adults.
As business owners, the hardest shift is often moving from ‘being the business’ or ‘the expert in the business’ to leading a team of people who run the business. The ego takes a hit when you find you are not being needed in the same way as the business grows.
Disenchantment
This is a much-needed stage. It’s where you review your previous reality and identify any assumptions or expectations that shaped it. For example, can only you run this client relationship? Is this key client only feeding your ego rather than providing much-needed cash and profit to your business?
Disorientation
This is the really messy bit of ending. You’ve challenged yourself on what is real and what is not real. You’ve realised what assumptions or identities you need to shift. But at this point, you’ve lost sight of the future. It can feel confused, and you can feel lost.
I can relate to this right now. As I planned the move for The Accountants’ Growth Club to become an Employee-Owned Trust, I lost sight of the way forward and the future for a number of weeks. I played the game I regularly play in this situation and considered that perhaps it would be easier if I went back to just being me and a handful of clients.
It’s that messy bit where you gradually recalibrate who you are and what your business now is and get ready to adapt to the new reality that awaits.
Want to explore more on transition during a period of change? Then scroll down 👇🏼 for my substack and book recommendations on these topics.
Book recommendations
William Bridges Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes
First published in 1980, Transitions was the first book to explore the underlying and universal pattern of transition. Named one of the fifty most important self-help books of all time, Transitions remains the essential guide for coping with the inevitable changes in life.
Transitions takes readers step-by-step through the three perilous stages of any transition, explaining how each stage can be understood and embraced. The book offers an elegant, simple, yet profoundly insightful roadmap to navigate change and move into a hopeful future.
Chip and Dan Heath Switch: How to change when change is hard
We all know that change is hard. It's unsettling, it's time-consuming, and all too often we give up at the first sign of a setback. But why do we insist on seeing the obstacles rather than the goal?
This is the question that bestselling authors Chip and Dan Heath tackle in their compelling and insightful book. They argue that we need to understand how our minds function in order to unlock shortcuts to switch up our behaviours. Illustrating their ideas with scientific studies and remarkable real-life turnarounds - from the secrets of successful marriage counselling to the pile of gloves that transformed one company's finances - the brothers Heath prove that deceptively simple methods can yield truly extraordinary results.
In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change.
Substack recommendations
Change To Lead is a newsletter written for Change Managers. Although you may not be in a change management career, this newsletter offers lots of great nuggets on how to bring about sustainable change.
Change-Makers’ Handbook Substack is your front-row seat to PhD findings into change-making and no-holds-barred insight into
experience across 5 continents. She talks about the why, the how, the how not to, and the personal toll of creating regenerative transformation.