The New Year is time for new beginnings, and with solution providers of all stripes facing a transition to cloud, making adjustments to the new IT or just trying to keep up with the industry, re-branding efforts are certainly being considered.

That can be a tall order, and it's made more difficult by one key pitfall highlighted recently in an Inc.com blog by Bert Jacobs, CEO of the Life Is Good Co.

In the column, Jacobs asks how a company can reinvent itself without losing touch with the things that made it special in the first place. It's an important question, especially for companies that need to make a change without turning their backs on the products, services and people that have taken them to this point.

For Jacobs and Life Is Good, the answer was to go back to the things that gave the company its start. But it's more subtle than that. It wasn't just a matter of dumping everything and starting over.

Life Is Good tested the basis for its re-branding effort over a period of years to make sure it would afford the kind of flexibility and work environment its owners were after. The loose, fun image that comes to mind when you think of Life Is Good is actually the product of careful study and consideration.

The end result, according to Jacobs, is a company that is successful without compromising its ideals, and without abandoning the principals that made it successful in the first place.

The lessons here are clear for solution providers. It seems like everyone in the IT industry knows what's best, and has lots of advice about jumping into cloud feet first, ditching the old way of doing things without a second thought and hoping to come out on top.

Instead, Jacobs would have you think about what made you passionate about the industry in the first place. What got you excited about your business in the beginning? How can you make that the basis of your transformation into a new mode of business?

Click here to read Jacobs' blog.