Most businesses accumulate things over time. Some are tangible, but many are simply ways of working that made sense when we started them.

Here’s one I’m fixing now. My calendar had collected several appointment types, mostly variations on 20-minute, one-hour, or two-hour consultations, many with “clever names” tied to my speaking topics. Eventually, even I had to look up the difference!

Or perhaps you’ve stayed in a networking group long after it stopped producing much business.

This one was hard for me. I loved my group and even joined another chapter when the first folded. I learned a tremendous amount; the members were in my target market, and many became dear friends I would still help in a heartbeat. Nevertheless, referrals dwindled and stretched farther apart, and in the end, I pulled away.

Neither was a mistake at the time. Something can be exactly right at one stage of your business and completely wrong at another. The question isn’t whether it was a good decision then; it’s whether it still makes sense now.

Experience changes a business owner. You learn which clients fit, which services are profitable and which merely keep you busy, and what you’re particularly good at—or simply don’t want to do anymore. Your capacity changes, too. You may have more help, better systems, or more financial stability, or you may have chosen to work fewer hours. Your business isn’t the same, so you shouldn’t necessarily run it the same way.

A useful tool

I learned the START/STOP/CONTINUE tool during a major change-management initiative at Mobil. Draw three columns and ask what to START (what do we need to begin?), STOP (what no longer serves us?)and CONTINUE (what deserves to keep going?). Making the lists isn’t complicated. Deciding what to do with them is the art.

STOP may be the hardest column. Stopping can feel like quitting, but sometimes it’s simply evidence that you’ve learned something.

Sometimes the problem isn’t that you’ve outgrown something; it’s that the business has become overgrown. One useful service became six variations. One procedure picked up extra steps. One commitment led to three more. Nothing was necessarily wrong with any of them, but together they’ve become too much.

Familiar isn’t the same as useful

Maybe you still handle an administrative task yourself because you always have, even though inexpensive tools could do much of it. Beware of “it’s just easier to do it myself.” That’s how you become the parent still making her 12-year-old’s bed. Five minutes a day for 12 years is roughly 365 hours, and the kid still hasn’t learned to make the bed!

The same test applies elsewhere. A marketing tactic that worked five years ago may not work now, and a service that once introduced people to you may now distract from more profitable work. Even some of our own rules deserve another look: “I always answer clients immediately.” “I have to offer this because people expect it.” “I can’t raise that price.” “I need to be on LinkedIn.” Or in the Chamber of Commerce. Or on a board. Do you?

The challenge: Make some room

This isn’t an argument for changing everything. Small businesses often get stronger when we simplify them, and we needn’t abandon something just because it isn’t exciting anymore. Some boring things work extremely well. But there’s a difference between steady and stale.

So, before you plan what to add next year, make your own START/STOP/CONTINUE chart.

What takes more time than it’s worth? What are you doing mostly out of habit? Which clients, services or activities no longer fit your direction? And perhaps the most interesting question:

What would you have room to do if you stopped doing something else?

I’m dealing with that one myself. I’ve decided to invest real time, energy, and a few dollars in learning to use AI well in my business. As in the early days of the internet, I don’t need to become a technical expert, but I do need to understand a change affecting how business gets done.

That time must come from somewhere, so my STOP column isn’t necessarily filled with things that are bad, broken, or useless. Some may simply matter less now than what I need to make room for.

Possibilities

This exercise is less about subtraction than possibility. A business has limited resources: not just money, but time, attention, and energy. When too much is tied up with keeping things the business has outgrown, there isn’t much room for what comes next. Sometimes the next stage doesn’t begin by adding something new. It begins by making room for it.

Lorette Pruden has helped hundreds of small business owners, sales professionals, entrepreneurs, and community leaders grow their businesses and manage that growth since 2000. She specializes in the Formerly Corporate—so many small business owners who’ve worked with her come from a corporate background that she finally wrote the book on it.