The ‘We’ve Always Done It This Way’ Tax.

By Vicki Morris | V. Renee Consulting

Every business pays it. Most don’t know it has a name.

The ‘we’ve always done it this way’ tax is the compound cost of every process, strategy, or approach your organization has refused to examine because it was too familiar to question.

It shows up in your marketing. In your sales cycle. In your client experience. And it is almost always more expensive than you think.

Familiar is not the same as effective.

The trade show you’ve been sponsoring for eight years because you’ve always sponsored it. The email format that no one has updated since 2019. The messaging that was written for a market that has since shifted.

None of these things are wrong because they’re old. They’re worth questioning because they’ve never been questioned.

Effective marketing requires honest evaluation. And honest evaluation requires being willing to look at everything — especially the things that feel settled.

Why organizations resist the examination.

Because questioning the approach can feel like criticizing the people who built it.

Because change requires investment — of time, money, and political capital — before it produces return.

Because leaders who have been doing something a certain way for years have some of their identity tied up in that approach being right.

None of these are good reasons to keep doing something that’s not working. But they are very human reasons.

What the tax actually looks like.

Money spent on activities that aren’t producing results because no one has been authorized to say so.

Opportunities missed because the process doesn’t allow for the kind of speed or flexibility that the opportunity requires.

Market position changed. While you’re doing what you’ve always done, your competitors are testing, learning, and optimizing.

The audit most marketing teams need permission to do.

Give your marketing team explicit permission to question everything. Every channel, every campaign, every recurring activity.

Ask them to bring you a list of what they’d stop doing if they could. And then actually listen to the answers.

The exercise will tell you a lot about where the tax is being paid — and whether the return justifies it.

The only question that matters.

Not ‘have we always done this?’ Not ‘did we used to get results from this?’

Is this working now? For the market we’re in, for the clients we’re trying to reach, for the goals we’re trying to hit.

If the honest answer is ‘we’re not sure’ — that’s the same as no. And it’s time to find out.

The companies that stay sharp are not the ones that never made assumptions. They’re the ones willing to examine them.

Audit the familiar. Question the comfortable. And stop paying a tax you didn’t know you were paying.

Vicki Morris is the founder of V. Renee Consulting, a strategic communications and marketing firm based in North Alabama. She works with business owners and leadership teams who are ready to stop guessing at marketing and start building something that actually works.

Ready to talk about what that looks like for your organization? Join my mailing list to learn more 😎: https://vreneeconsulting.kit.com/newsletter