Growing a business requires owners to know where they are, where they want to go and their roadmap to getting there.

Podcast Chapters
1:40 Making a career change
4:57 Looking back 24 years
5:37 Lessons from a “momtrepreneur”
6:19 An evolving business
7:36 The Chatham University Roadmap Program
8:00 Identifying attributes of valuable clients
9:35 Focusing on differentiators
10:32 Growth strategies moving forward
11:55 Advice for assessing growth

There’s a beginning to a career in promotional products that appears to be quite common among industry distributors who decided to open their own firm: they wanted more flexibility with their work lives and more of a say over their professional and personal destinies.

And it’s a nice problem to have when the business gets busy: clients are calling to fill orders and re-orders and it’s exhausting to try to keep up. But the abundance tends to come with a downside: prospects’ and clients’ immediate and persistent needs take precedence over long-term business planning. Weekends too tend to fill up with work, or they’re reserved for hard-earned leisure time. Frankly, it’s challenging for business owners to find the time to assess where the company is and where it needs to go over the next few years to remain successful.

But for any business owner who wants to see their company thrive, it’s imperative and a roadmap forward can help. Fortunately, there are actionable items owners can undertake today to get a better handle on their business and keep it moving forward, from defining value propositions, to identifying and pursuing ideal clients, to drawing out a strategic scalability plan and more. These actions will also put a company in a position to be more generously valuated if the owner decides to sell.

In this podcast, senior editor Sara Lavenduski speaks with Maria Brady of Marakae Marketing in Pittsburgh about her experience in the industry, where she is now and her plans for moving forward.