In this article we’re going to talk about how to use a Sunset review to grow your business and save you money. If you haven't heard of a Sunset review, it’s a business technique utilized by the Sunset Review Commission in Texas. It's been around for about 40 years, and during that 40 years, it's saved the state almost $980 million. Today, I'm going to show you how to use it for your business, and how it can save you money as well.

1. SWOT analysis

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You really want to take your time here. Now you can use this as a full-scale, approach to your business, but more specifically, I would dive into specific programs, marketing campaigns, different business lines that you have, different products or revenues, maybe events that you've done, different things like that (including things like one product shopify store, etc). This is a great opportunity to really dive into very specific parts of your business, and do an analysis of them. What you want to do is label out the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Label all those out, identify what they are.

2. Assume the worst

Take everything that you've learned, or everything that you know about the particulars of your business or of the program that you're looking into. Now assume the worst if you were to cancel everything out immediately. What would happen? Would you see a loss in revenue? Would there be PR backlash? Is there an opportunity for another business to come in and fill the void or fill that space that you've just vacated? What's the worst that can happen if you decided to turn off the power to the event, the program, the revenue-generating stream, the marketing campaign? What would happen if you completely turned everything off? By identifying your worst-case scenario, you're better able to understand what the real ramifications are. And you need to know this for our next step.

3. Find the silver lining

Now you've already gone through, you’ve identified your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You've looked at your worst-case scenarios. Now look at your best-case scenarios. Now even if there was a failure here, even if the campaign didn't do what you wanted it to do, or the event was under-attended, or the product launch or the product line didn't really make the splash you were looking for. There's always something to learn. So at bare minimum, always find the silver lining in the little things that you can do. Now, on the other hand, you may have seen great success with the marketing campaign, or great success with the event, or the business, or the product line, the new brand, the new website, anything like that. Look for your best-case scenarios. Find the silver lining. Find your success points and write those down as well. You need to use this so you can compare and contrast and identify your worst-case scenario and your best-case scenario. Now best case, you keep doing what you're doing. Or is that really best case? What we want to do now is identify the key points of what contributed to your success. Your entire campaign, your entire brand, your entire website did not all contribute to the success that you saw. So what you need to do here is identify the exact pieces, the exact opportunities that drove the success you experienced. Once you can identify these, we move on.

4. Dream big

Take everything you learned in steps two and three, your worst-case and your best-case scenarios (including things like aliexpress product analysis). Once you've narrowed those down, now you can start to dream big and try to understand, or try to envision what you want this campaign or product or brand or website to look like in the future. This is your time to trim the fat. Because you were able to go through and find your worst-case scenarios and you were also able to go through and discover the key points that contributed to your success, now I want you to narrow everything down. This is a takeaway time. Dream big onto how you want to accomplish things, what kind of success you want to see, where you want to go in the future, and identify key points that will get you there. Cut out everything that doesn't help achieve that goal. Cut out everything that doesn't really accomplish what you're looking for. You already know your worst-case scenarios, so let's trim down from there. You know your best-case scenarios, and you know the key points that got you where you're going. So let's get rid of everything else. By dreaming big and focusing in on what actually drove success and the points that may have contributed to a lack of success, you're able to really focus and hone in on what's going to see the success you need in the future.

5. Implement and try again

Now that you've asked yourself this question, if I changed x, would that contribute to a change in y? Once you've asked that question, and gone through all these steps, now is your chance to implement again. You've trimmed the fat, you've cut everything out, and focus in on your success points. This Sunset review, this whole example here is just driving down to where you can narrow in on everything that works, and get rid of everything that doesn't. That's the key point of marketing. Do more of what work, and less of what doesn't. So by doing a Sunset review, you're able to understand this. Now it doesn't just have to be for marketing. You can do this for your business programs, your website, different product lines. You can do this for product launches, or expenses in your business, expansion opportunities, anything like that. After you've accomplished a goal, or after you've completed a campaign or completed a project, that's the perfect time to do this Sunset review, especially if it's something you're planning on doing in the future. So we've narrowed everything down. Now is the time to implement. Make your changes, try it again. Guess what? Immediately after this, you want to do another Sunset review. The more you can focus on driving your own success, and the more you can focus on changing things, the longer your business will be around, and the more growth and more success you'll see. Businesses and companies that do the same thing again and again, they do the same marketing, they sell the same products, they have the same website, they have the same brand, honestly, they don't stick around for very long. Eventually, you'll find that customers change, and consumer desires change, and trust in the business changes, and the demographics change. You have to change with your customers. And a great way to do that is by focusing on this and doing a Sunset review.