The opposite of winging it

In the September 2024 edition:

• The solo business owner’s guide to strategy—what “strategy” means for us, why it’s important, and how to tell if a lack of strategy is hurting your business 🤕

• How to deal with creative blocks, from neurodivergent author Katherine May 🌈

• Sick of sitting at your desk all day? Transport yourself into nature with one click 🦅

SOMETHING USEFUL

The Opposite of Winging It—A Solo Owner’s Guide to Business Strategy

Corporate jargon is awful. “Let’s circle back on how to maximize our synergies to leverage this low-hanging fruit!” Ughhh. Jargon is an easy target because, honestly, it deserves to be made fun of.

But sometimes I worry that legitimate business concepts get written off as silly jargon just because they get overused online.

When I talk about strategy or strategic action planning, I wonder—does this sound like a bunch of corporate BS? I hope not, because having a clear, simple strategy can be the difference between success and failure for solo small business owners.

But knowing how to create one isn’t obvious. Most big-name business influencers don’t reveal their strategic planning processes—but you can bet they’re not winging it, and neither should you.

Read on for what you need to know about strategy, why it’s important, and how to tell if a lack of strategy is hurting you and your business.

Strategy: What does it even mean?

In one sentence, strategy is knowing where you are now, deciding where you want to be in the future, and figuring out how to get from here to there.

Knowing where you are now requires time to reflect and assess. What’s working well in your business today, and what’s not? What’s missing? Is what you’re doing sustainable for the long haul, or are you burning yourself out?

Deciding where you want to be means getting clear about your goals. What do you want to achieve? What do you want to be known for? Are your goals what you want, or just what’s being sold to you on social media?

Figuring out how to get from where you are to where you want to be means deciding what to do, and what not to do, to move closer to your goals today, tomorrow, and into the future.

Strategy is power + purpose

If you aren’t setting and following your own strategy, you’ll spend all your time reacting to other people instead of acting on your own ideas and values.

I’m guessing you didn’t start your own business just to satisfy the demands of other people all day. Creating your own strategy is how you give yourself power and direction, how you build your own success. It’s also how you differentiate yourself from the other people in your industry.

If your daily actions are driven by external influences, you’ll be the same as everyone else who’s following those influences. If your daily actions are driven by your specific vision of what you’re capable of and what you have to offer, there’s a better chance you’ll create something truly unique and distinguish yourself from the rest of the pack.

Strategy isn’t just about getting from here to there—it’s about understanding yourself and achieving your individual vision of success.

Common roadblocks to look out for

I’m not saying this is easy. Setting and implementing a business strategy is hard for many reasons—some logistical, and some that are deeper than that. Finding time to prioritize your goals and organize them into a cohesive strategy is difficult, but there’s help for that. The deeper issues that are more challenging to address are:

Vulnerability

Clarifying your goals and setting a strategy can feel like opening the door to potential failure.

When you set an audacious goal, you open yourself up to the possibility that you may not achieve it. But when you accept the chance of failure and move forward anyway, you normalize the unavoidable fact that things don’t always go according to plan (and that’s not always bad.)

In my corporate career, we considered it a success to achieve 70-80% of our strategic plans for any given quarter or year. Perfection was not, and should never be, the goal.

As a solo business owner, you know how to bet on yourself. Continuously building and updating your strategy is how you keep up your momentum and prove that you can trust yourself, even when the plan doesn’t come together like you expected.

Invisibility

Successful business strategy is often hidden from the outside world.

The reason I know anything about business strategy and how to create a strategic plan is that I worked in corporate business strategy for several years. I learned how to connect ideas to results, create plans that were actually doable, and make difficult decisions about which ideas were not worth pursuing.

This work was 100% internal, never discussed with or disclosed to anyone outside the company. The only external indication of all the work we put into our strategy was the continued success and growth of our organization.

The same is true of any business owner you admire—they put a lot of work into creating and executing their strategy. And they don’t usually share it with the public.

Strategy is the sketch under the painting, the painstaking research behind the best-seller, the training plan leading to the Olympic medal. It is the thoughtful, intentional, internal work that creates the external success we all want. It’s the boring preparation for the exciting achievement.

How to know if strategy is what you’re missing

If you’re noticing any of these signs in yourself or your business, it’s time to stop winging it and start being more strategic:

• Things are feeling stagnant and it’s not clear how to move forward.

• You’re lacking self-direction—asking friends, family, or social media followers what you should do instead of charting your own path.

• External influences, trends, and demands are drowning out your internal voice, values, and boundaries.

• You have a lot of ideas, but can’t find time or space to work on them.

• Every day is busy but you feel like you’re going nowhere—like you’re on a treadmill.

• When you do get some free time, you’re not sure how to use it and then you feel frustrated for “wasting” it.

Launching a business requires courage, dedication, and perseverance (and maybe a tiny bit of self-delusion.) But running a business requires strategy and execution. To gain stability and longevity, you need to be intentional about where you want to go and how you’re going to get there.

SOMETHING NEAT

Being a solo business owner requires a lot of writing. Website copy, social media posts, blog articles, sales pages, and on & on. And we’ve all had those moments when the words just won’t come; especially those of us who have ADHD, trouble with executive function, or are chronically low on mental bandwidth 🙋

So I appreciated this list of 10 ways to remove creative blocks from neurodivergent author Katherine May (Wintering, Enchantment). I particularly identify with this excerpt from #9, Find Some Silence:

A LITTLE TREAT

I’ve been a bird nerd for a long time, and judging by how many people I see singing the praises of Merlin (a bird identification app from Cornell), it seems a lot of you are too.

Next time you need a quick break, don’t scroll social media—try the Cornell Lab FeederWatch livestream instead. Watch songbirds eating treats in a beautiful park near Ithaca, NY. It’s the perfect mental reset, but make sure you watch during the day—at night the birds are sleeping 😴

WORK WITH ME

This newsletter is for everyone, but a one-on-one consulting engagement is tailored to you and your business. Here’s how I can support you:

• Strategic Action Planning—For solo business owners with a lot to do, and never enough time. We’ll refine, prioritize, and organize your goals, and I’ll create a road map for you to get them done. (My most popular service—currently scheduling for early November.)

• Operations Analysis—Is your business built on a strong, long-lasting foundation? An operational deep dive will reveal any potential issues, and tell you exactly how to fix them (scheduling for late October/early November.)

• General Consulting—Get expert support with business challenges like workload sustainability, financial fundamentals, pricing, client communication, and more (scheduling for November.)

When you’re ready, schedule a free 30 minute intro call with me.

Thanks for reading—see you next month. If you have a business owner friend who would find this newsletter useful, please forward it to them!