Every race car has a driver. Every driver has a different set of skills that makes him – or her unique. The drivers who are the most successful in a race, series of races, year-in, year-out, are the ones who have mastered the combination of their skills sets to achieve a winning strategy out of the gate, time and again.

Every successful sports team has an incredibly effective head coach, set of coaches, and owner(s) who can pull a diverse set of talented players together, mold them into a highly functioning team, and be capable, and able, to win games and championships regularly. The head coach, the one who can identify great talent, great assistant coaches, and who, with them, can develop a series of game-winning strategies to overcome the challenges from other effective head coaches and teams are highly sought after.

Every owner who runs his or her business also has a unique set of skills abilities. Similarly, they are often viewed as the lead driver, head coach, team leader, or the cog in the wheel that wins races, games, and provides great products and services. They develop a great approach, product or service, hire, manage, and lead employees, service customers, attend to marketing, sales, branding, creating new products or services, and finances.

Time Wears On

Over time, those champion race car drivers get outraced by other drivers - those who may have developed an “edge” or different way of winning (or, daresay younger). The same thing can happen to head coaches. Sometimes they need a change of teams to rekindle that spark and chemistry that made them highly effective, and sometimes they lose their edge as other teams, intent on developing their own winning strategies, rebuild chemistry and personnel. They may even get tired.

A business owner who has started his or her own business, run it for a length of time, experienced business highs and lows, may, over time, lose their spark, they may start getting outraced by their competition. I don’t suggest they get tired, but, heck, being responsible 24/7 for their enterprise can be emotionally and physically taxing. It’s no different with race car drivers and head coaches.

Bringing In A Fresh Set Of Eyes

The desire to win is constant. Stay stuck in neutral at the starting line, fail to score enough points inside the 20-yard line, and seeing your business start to lose its edge by stagnating sales (amongst others) could be a reason to consider bringing in a fresh set of eyes.

Change is a constant. Resist recognizing the tell-tale signs of change and you can have a string of sure-bet races lost, and witness back to back losing seasons. There are many analogies in business: the brand looks tired, long-time customers move to a competitor who has a different approach, staff get recruited by other companies (or maybe they wanted more and it just wasn’t there?).

Time to think about a change? Perhaps discussing bringing in a fresh set of eyes – a CEO to run your company and help to rebrand, build sales, solidify customer relationships, and retain and recruit great staff has merit.

Some clients, especially baby boomer business owners, tell me they don’t want to retire, and they don’t’ want to sell their business. Perhaps you don’t. Perhaps there is a solution available right now. Is it worthy of discussion?