Quarterly Business Review for Small Business Owners: What to Keep, Change, or Improve - MM 247

Maggie shares why sustainable growth comes from studying both what’s working and what’s not in your small business. She walks through how to review your strategies, measure results, test changes, and make smarter decisions instead of switching direction too quickly.

You’ll also hear a client example of how refining a networking strategy, rather than abandoning it, turned it into a major source of business growth.

If you’ve been moving fast without stopping to reflect, this episode will help you step back, do a meaningful quarterly review, and decide what to improve, change, or do more of in the next quarter.

As Q1 of 2026 wraps up, this is the perfect time to pause and become the scientist of your service-based business.

Take an hour this week, do your simple yet powerful quarterly review, and if you want support going deeper, book a complimentary consultation with Maggie here - https://www.stairwaytoleadership.com/

Transcript

 As we approach the end of the first quarter of 2026, this is a powerful time to pause and become the scientist of your business in the beginning of the year. It's easy to set exciting goals, but as the weeks move on. I see many business owners lose sight of those goals and skip back into the old habits.

That's why this season matters. Being the scientist of your business means stepping back to reflect, review, and analyze what's actually happening in your business. Why it's happening so that you can make smarter decisions moving forward and if anything, compound the growth and all the good things that are happening and fix little issues before they become big problems.

So here's what it means to be the scientist of your business. You need to observe what's working, understand why it's working. Figure out how to do it better and or more of it because that's what creates your results. And then you also need to review what's not working, understand why it's not working, and decide whether whatever is not working can be improved.

Identify how to improve it. So what are you gonna change? Or what do you need to stop doing altogether and replace it maybe with a new strategy as needed?

So here mistakes that I see some business owners do, they start getting traction, let's say, from some marketing strategy that they decided to implement in the beginning of the year. But because the results are not happening fast enough. They switch those strategies too quickly instead of studying what is really showing promise, what are some progress goals that are indicating that this strategy might be working or have a chance of being successful?

They move on to something new, hoping it will work faster. What I'm here to tell you is don't switch too soon before you add more tactics. Study what is working, master it, do it better, do more of it. And then decide whether something needs to change or not.

At the same time, don't ignore things that are clearly not working.

Because you want to be honest with yourself and with your business and assess what needs refinement and whether something needs a different approach.

So I wanna give you a simple framework on how to think about it. The way you study is really you track the results, the strategies you implemented in your business are creating and you review them. How you track, you need to measure it. And you measure by establishing certain key performance indicators.

For example, your sales conversion rate. So how many sales do you get from the number of sales conversations or sales touch points you have with your potential clients throughout the month?

Then you wanna understand what goes into the process and what are the variables? And once you understand it, you're able to isolate one variable at a time and form theories. Why they're working or why not, and run experiments in tweaking those variables to see if that changes the overall result.

And of course, as a scientist, you always document your findings. Because when you document things, you can replicate the good things that are happening and speed up and compound your positive results. This is how you stop guessing as to what's working in your business and how to grow it to start leading your business with intention.

I teach this approach to all of my clients. I use it.

I'll give you an example. One client, when they came to me, they were telling me that networking doesn't work for them. They've done it all. They tried it all, it never worked, and they were about to give up networking altogether, but instead of abandoning.

That strategy first, we paused and reviewed. We looked at my client's strengths, how they were networking, where they were networking. Whether those rooms and relationships that they could probably build there were aligned with their business goals, their business, ideal clients, the industry that they were in.

And that analysis changed so much for them because once we refined the approach, we shifted things intentionally. Networking became one of the strongest drivers of business growth for them. Now a lot of their business comes from the relationships they build through networking.

So as quarter one wraps up, find an hour this week, I call it your CEO Power Hour. In turn into a scientist to do the quarterly review of your business. You wanna understand what is working, why it is working, how can you do it better and or more of what's working. Then you look at what isn't working, why it isn't working.

What parts of it need maybe refining or changing. Or what you might need to quit doing altogether.

And if you wanna build a habit and a cadence of reviewing your business this way and do it with a deeper expert review, I can always help. Book a free consultation with me through the link in the show notes. Have a great week. Let me know how it goes, and have a great week.