How to plan your business strategy
Strategy is a military term. It comes from the Greek word strategos meaning ‘generalship‘… I take it to mean ‘How can I achieve that outcome with these resources, this time and this landscape?’.
Being strategic in your business means having an approach that uses the resources, time and opportunity you have in a smart, albeit ambitious, way. And it means ruling out just as much as you rule in.
Think of business strategy this way. You’re standing at the edge of a river. On the other side of the river is your vision. There are multiple ways to cross the river. You could take the bridge, fly, swim, use stepping stones, row etc. etc. But would you agree that you can’t use the bride and swim at the same time? Because that’s impossible. So pick one. Which is the best option giving the time, the resources available and the landscape.
I think this is one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when trying to get to build a six figure business. They try to deliver on two strategies at once. Take your time. Think it through. Make a decision.
For example, when I was first building DARETOGROW, I made the strategic decision to vlog almost daily to document my journey of change. It was a great way to break through the noise, build trust and prove it was possible to scale a business from nothing to multiple six figures.
Plus, as a friend of mine in LA pointed out to me recently, it helped me to hone my craft as a film maker, learning how to tell stories, learning how to hold attention. Now, I can put all that focus into one or two videos each week and make them pop!
Now that I’m running a much bigger business, it’s just not practical to vlog every day. I’m working much more closely with clients in Expansion Business School, I’m travelling more and I have other projects like my book and my upcoming podcast wahooo!!
So, me and my team sat down to refocus our vision, explore the options and decide on a new strategy.
The outcome? Now we batch-film content in one day. We literally meet in a location, list out all the things our audience needs to know and film 6-8 videos in a day!
For each new video, I just whack on a different top to keep it varied.
This is a much more productive use of my time now and it means it’s easier for the team to turn around super high quality content on reliable, consistent basis!
Shout to you all – Matt, Amy and Hollie! I could not do this without you.
As your business grows, your strategy will evolve too. That’s cool. Let it.
But at each stage decide.
The test of a good strategy is the ‘I’m out test’.
Imagine all of a sudden you can’t work. You’re head to toe in a cast and can’t type or anything! Nightmare. Your vision and your strategy should be so frickin’ clear and so concise that you should be able to hand it over to a team and have them deliver it for you.
