Sarah Lakhani Consulting

Helping entrepreneurs build businesses with clarity and ease through strategic business design

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The 3 Business Success Factors

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I love strategy just as much as the next management consultant, but as a business owner, I’ve got to say, there are 3 business success factors, and strategy is just one of them.  The other two are action and mindset.  And more than ever, when you’re starting/running your own business, you’ll notice the (negative) effects when you’re focused on only one or two of these areas.  They may not all need equal amounts of your time, but they do all need your attention.  

Why these three factors?

How did we get here?  What makes these three things the areas that everything else falls into?  Well… it’s quite simple really:

Strategy keeps you moving in the right direction.

Mindset ensures you’re removing your own blocks and moving forward in a way that feels good.

And action keeps you moving.  

Lack of Strategy

Most of my clients come to me for strategy.  And that’s totally understandable.  Strategy is deciding where you want to be, how you want to position yourself and mapping out a roadmap to get there.  It covers your overall business strategy, brand strategy and all the pieces that fit into them, such as your marketing strategy, your sales strategy and your customer strategy.  

When you have a gap in this particular business success factor, you’ll find that you’re either lost, not taking any steps forward because you just don’t know what to do or you’ll find yourself jumping from one strategy to another.  You’ll likely also be listening to multiple people, maybe multiple mentors or business coaches, and consuming all their free content.  Piecing all this free content together to form a strategy is near impossible.  Why?  Because each piece is part of a different strategy. 

Instead, what you need to do if this sounds like the situation you’re in is to commit to one strategy.  One way of making money, of selling, of marketing, of moving people through your customer journey.  Define that one way and then map out how you’re going to get there.  Commit to that.  And stop listening to and being swayed by other strategies.  The truth is, many strategies will work.  The trick is to find the one that suits you and your strengths the most.  

Lack of Action

It goes without saying that not taking action is going to result in not getting anywhere, right?  Logically, this makes sense.  But many of us (myself included, once upon a time!) love the strategy and mindset elements and just end up spending most of our time there.  Action is moving your business along the roadmap that you’ve created from your strategy work.  It’s moving the needle every day, taking action, implementing a part of your strategy.  

When you have a gap in this business success factor, you’ll notice that you have lots of great ideas, an incredibly well defined strategy, but nothing that others can see.  It’s all virtual, or in documents, but nothing has been implemented.  To be honest, I’ve seen a lot of strategy work end without any action being taken.  And the truth is, no amount of strategy work is going to helpful if you don’t take the required action.  

So if you find that you’re the type of business owner who loves to spend time in strategy mode and not enough time implementing, here are my three recommendations:

  1. Take small action.  Any action is better than no action.  So break things down into bite-sized chunks and do a small bit every day.
  2. Reward yourself for completing your action.  Save that piece of chocolate until after you’ve completed your task. 
  3. Remind yourself how far you’ve come and put things into perspective.  It wasn’t as difficult as you imagined it would be, right?  And the benefits of taking action far outweigh the benefits of not taking action.  Read that again if you need to.  

Lack of Mindset

Ah, mindset.  The one thing no one thinks they need until they realize they need it.  Personally, I try to impact mindset through sharing my positivity, my energy and my way of thinking with my clients.  But that’s not enough.  Mindset includes figuring out why you are resisting certain things that you know you should be doing, and then working through those reasons.  

When you have a mindset block, you’ll most likely be living out one (or a few) limiting beliefs.  Perhaps you don’t believe you’re ready to take action.  Or you don’t think you deserve to make money.  Or you think sales is icky.  These beliefs then drive your subconscious and you’ll live them out without realizing it.  You’ll give a less-than-stellar strategy call or pitch.  You’ll be too busy to do any marketing.  Or you’ll spend minimal amount of time, if at all, “selling”.  

Watch out for your thoughts.  What do you tell yourself frequently?  “I am terrible at marketing”? “I don’t want to be that type of sales person”? “Sure, she’s making $50k a month, but I could never”?  Your thoughts drive your beliefs which drive your actions.  If you think you can’t, if you think you shouldn’t, if you think you don’t deserve it, etc, you won’t do it or get it.  You might not realize it, or see it happening, but your thoughts literally drive everything you do – in life and in business.  

Now you know the 3 business success factors. What’s next?

Now that you know what the 3 business success factors are, I challenge you to take the time to really watch yourself.  Find out where you’re falling short.  And then use the tips above to fill in that gap.  When you do, you’ll see the changes start to unfold right in front of your eyes.  These 3 factors literally drive the success of your business.  You’ve got this! 

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Change is hard: How to make it easier

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I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again and I’ll definitely keep saying it: Change is hard.  If it were easy, everyone would be doing it ALL. THE. TIME.  But they’re not, and the reason for that is because creating a change in your life or in your business requires alignment and action on multiple levels.  Yes, I’m talking strategy + action + mindset. 

Strategy

Of course, when it comes to creating change in your business, your strategy is essential.  You absolutely need to know what you’re going to change and how you’ll go about doing it.  In fact, most change efforts focus primarily on this one area.  And that’s why they usually fail.  Because focusing just on strategy doesn’t help you implement and stick with the change.  For that, you need mindset and action.  

But, before we move onto mindset and action, let’s examine the importance of strategy.  Strategy work results in making a decision on where you’re headed and how you’re going to get there.  It creates clarity around your vision and the pathway to get you there.  Strategy is a very essential component of change.  It’s just not the only component.  

Action

Having decided where you’re headed and how you’re going to get there, you’ll now need to take action on those initiatives or steps.  This is where the resistance starts to come up.  When you’re working on your strategy, everything is still theoretical, so it’s a lot easier to accept and move through.  But when you start creating the change, that’s when your subconscious kicks in to “protect” you.  

Your brain is designed to keep you safe.  If it senses danger, it will initiate thoughts and actions that it considers to be “for your safety”.  Of course, these things are not necessarily what we would consciously consider to be things to be kept safe from, but since they are new – and with new territory comes an element of the unknown, which then leads to the possibility of danger – your brain believes otherwise.  

Mindset

Supporting all your strategy and action initiatives is your mindset.  This is where your efforts are either amplified or chopped down.  Going through the motions without necessarily being 100% in will not get you the results you’re hoping for.  

Your mindset supports you in carrying out your actions from your strategy in a way that produces results.  This can be frequency, it can be ideas, it can be the language you use, the energy you bring to conversations.  Mindset can literally affect anything and everything.  So getting this right is also key.

5 steps to make change happen

Now that you know how the three business elements – strategy, action and mindset – affect your ability to create that change you’ve been wanting, let’s look at the 5 steps to make it happen. 

  1. Understand the reason for change

Before embarking on any change at any level, you need to prep yourself and your mind with why this change is needed.  Look at the parts of your life or your business that are not making you feel good.  Really feel the pain that it’s causing you.  And then think about what you’d like to have in the future and create that picture in your mind.  Feel what you’d be feeling if that were true for you right now.  

And then write it all down.  Write down all your reasons why you need to create this change in your life or in your business.  Ideally, put this list somewhere you can easily access every day so you can read it and remind yourself why you need to do the things you’ve got planned out.  

  1. Find the right support system

Never underestimate the power of being supported.  When I talk about support, I like to categorize it into two buckets – the support that comes from family and friends and the support that comes from peers.  The former is great in giving you the space (and if you like to use the word, the permission) to create the change you seek.  The latter, however, is the one that gives you the perspective and the stories of their experience. 

When creating change in your life, having someone who has been through, is going through or has helped other people through the same change is invaluable.  It’s like having your own personal guide or team of guides.  The right support system can help you figure out what path to take, how to overcome obstacles, what issues to look out for and what to do when you’re ready to give up.  

  1. Create your vision (and communicate it to your team, if you have one)

So by this point you’ve got your reason for change and you have a support system.  Next, you’ll have to create your vision.  You will have certainly started this process when you were understanding your reason for change, but now is the time to work out all the details.  What exactly is this future you want to create?  How will you get there?  What are all the steps and actions you need to plan and work through?  

The key here is clarity.  The more clear the vision, the more likely you’ll be to get there.  This is especially true if you have a team.  Can each person on your team articulate the vision?  And when they do, are they all saying the same thing?  

  1. Start generating small wins, and then move onto bigger changes

To ensure that your mind and body feel safe (because, don’t forget that change is something your brain categorizes as a potential threat), create small wins at first.  These are the little things that push you a little, but still produce a desired outcome that nudges you a little closer to your end goal.  

After a few small wins, start working on some larger tasks.  You might find that you face some internal resistance.  If you do, it’s time to work through it.  There are many things you can do here.  My favorite is journalling.  Write down everything you’ve accomplished so far, then move onto the things that are causing you to feel worried, or feel difficult.  As you list these down, look for evidence that disproves each one of them.  You can wrap up with some affirmations or future pacing (where you write about the future scenario in the present tense).  

  1. Celebrate your wins

Celebrate every single win, no matter how small! In fact, I like to tell my clients to celebrate everything at every stage.  For example, if you were on a sales call and the person you were talking to said they wanted to sign up for your program, celebrate! And then when the payment comes through, celebrate again! 

The energy around celebrating is one of pure gratitude.  And we all know gratitude is so incredibly important.  It cultivates the energy and the frequency within you to create more gratitude through more wins and more of the actions that got you there in the first place.  So celebrate as much as you can!

Final words on creating lasting change

In short, any change requires you to create the right strategy, take the right actions and have the right mindset to support it all.  These three things are embedded across the five steps that I’ve found to work in creating any change in your life and in your business: 

  1. Understand the reason for change.  
  2. Find the right support system
  3. Create your vision (and communicate it to your team, if you have one)
  4. Start generating small wins, and then move onto bigger changes
  5. Celebrate your wins

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Plan versus Action

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Somewhere along your business journey, I’m sure that either you or someone around you has brought up the question of spending time putting a plan together versus taking action and figuring things out along the way.  It seems to be a dichotomy.  But it’s not.  In the question of plan versus action, the truth is simple: there should be a continuous ebb and flow between planning and taking action. 

Entrepreneurs are known for taking quick action, versus traditional corporates where planning, exploring different strategies and ensuring perfection before moving forward is the norm.  But neither extreme is the right way forward.

As entrepreneurs, we often come across the advice to “take messy action”.  And yes, taking action early on is absolutely necessary.  You learn by doing, not by thinking.  You validate your business idea, your product/service, your offer, your marketing, your branding and messaging – all of it – by taking action and gathering feedback.  But that’s not to say that you should take action without thinking things through.  

What goes into planning?

Planning is the first step in your business.  When I talk about planning, I don’t mean to immediately jump into a business plan.  Nor do I mean anything detailed like a content plan.    Initial planning is about getting clarity on your business idea.  Initial planning is getting clear on your vision, the problem you’re solving, how you’re going to solve it, the solution you’re providing, who your ideal customers are, and how you’re going to monetize your idea.  It involves a lot of research and results in capturing your business idea in the structure or framework of a business model.  Again, this won’t be as detailed as after you’ve taken action, but what it does is it allows you to be able to articulate your product or service and create prototypes or beta versions to test and gather feedback on.  

What goes into action?

Once you have your business idea, you absolutely should start testing it.  If you have a product, gather feedback on it by offering some free samples, or a discounted initial price.  If you have a service, begin a beta phase, again either free or at a discounted initial price.  In this phase, you are testing your product or service, gathering as much information and feedback about it, and deciding on the changes you will make to it.  Your changes will include adding, removing, upgrading and downgrading elements of your product or service.  At this point, you will also gather important information on the messaging you will later on use in your marketing.  Once you have made the changes, depending on how big they are, you can either test again or move into your launch.  

The cycle between the two

Often, we’ll find that there is a cycle back and forth between the two, particularly when the product or service being created is highly innovative.  So you’ll do some planning, then move into action, and then go back into planning, then back into action, etc.  The reason this happens is because in each cycle, you’ll make changes that are larger compared to if the product or service had already existed in the market.  You might, however, still want to go through a second round of planning and action, even if your product or service exists, depending on what it is and how many changes you’re making. 

How much time to spend in planning before moving into action

The question of plan versus action is not black and white.  It’s a balancing act that you need to figure out for yourself, your business and your product/service.  And there are several things that will drive where that point of balance is for you.  On top of the questions I suggest below, it’s important to factor in what makes you comfortable.  If you prefer to spend a bit more time in planning, then do it! It’s your business and your decision.  But always check back to make sure you’re not procrastinating because of a hidden fear driven by a mindset block or a limiting belief.  

How innovative is your idea?

The more you’re pushing boundaries, the more you’ll want to get out and test your idea.  This might be a bit counter-intuitive, but the reason behind it is that it’s going to be very difficult to find existing data on a product or service that doesn’t exist.  So if your product or service doesn’t currently exist in the market, then you’ll need to generate that data yourself.  That is why the more innovative your idea is, the more quickly you’ll move onto action.  And in this case, your action will consist of prototyping, testing, collecting feedback, making changes as needed and then re-launching.  And the faster you can get through these, the more quickly you’ll have a product or service that you can sell.  

How many similar businesses are out there (who have already validated your idea)?

If, on the other hand, your product or service exists in some form in the market today (and makes money!), then you will probably spend more time on collecting information that will shape your specific business, your product/service and your offer.  And the reason for that is because data exists.  So instead of having to go out and generate data and feedback yourself, you can easily leverage the information that is already out there.  And you 100% should!   

How much is it going to cost to create or set up?

Another factor to consider is how much your new business venture is going to cost you, not just in terms of money, but also in terms of time, resources, and other lost opportunities.  If the cost is high, then you’ll most likely want to make sure you have a solid understanding of your customer needs, struggles, likes and dislikes (with regards to your product or service), the value you are providing and how it’s going to solve the problem that your customer has.  This is, of course, dependent on whether information exists for you to tap into.    

How much time do you have to spend on research and planning before you absolutely must begin bringing in revenue?

Lastly, your planning phase can be stretched out if you already have an existing income stream, are not in a hurry, and would prefer not to hustle and push yourself to get your business idea implemented quickly.  I love to see people spend an allocate amount of time to building their business (or a new revenue stream within their existing business) while still working a 9-to-5 job or delivering their existing products and services.  The great thing about this is that you don’t stress yourself out, you don’t allow yourself to get overwhelmed and you don’t burn out.  The flipside, however, is allowing yourself to take too long or never getting it off the ground.  

Plan versus Action

Once you have an idea of where your business idea stands and how much time you should spend on planning before moving into action, you’ll need to figure out just what the planning stage entails and also, what the action stage entails.  So it’s time for you to decide – plan versus action?  How much time should you spend in each phase to generate the highest benefit for you and your business?    

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