strategy

The 3 Business Success Factors

November 10, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

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:

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.
Reward yourself for completing your action. Save that piece of chocolate until after you’ve completed your task.
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!

Did you find this helpful? Share it with someone who needs it, too!

Change is hard: How to make it easier

October 27, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

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.

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.

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.

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?

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).

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:

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

Was this helpful? Share it with others!

Decision Making: Your Greatest Asset

September 22, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

Decision making is one of the hardest things that you, as a business owner and founder will have to do. Hands down. Why? Because it always feels so permanent. In this article, I’m going to cover three types of decisions: (1) Your overall business proposition (2) Your business direction and (3) Your mindset.

Why Decisions Matter

Before we explore the three types of decisions, let’s take a moment to examine why this is an important topic. Whether you’re in corporate or running your own business, whether you’re a small, medium, large or global business, the same reason applies. Trying to move a business forward without being able to make decisions is highly unlikely to happen. Basically, you just can’t move forward if you’re unable to make decisions.

If you think about places you’ve worked at where your boss, manager or the president of the company were unable to make decisions, I’m sure you’ll find that the people within the teams reporting into them were always confused about what the right thing to do was, always doing something then changing course, and always busy working but producing a low result for the business. And here’s the thing – it’s not the team’s fault. Unless everyone knows what they’re meant to be working towards, it’s just always going to be this way. Sometimes, the results can still be great – because of luck. But most of the time, they just won’t be.

The Impact of Decisions

So now what about the decisions you need to make (and could be struggling with) in your business? How do they affect your business? Whether you’re a solopreneur or have a team, not making the decisions you need to make will invariably slow you down by either stopping work from progressing or progressing it in multiple directions. If you don’t have a team, this could manifest as doing and re-doing work such as changing your business purpose, your target audience or your services. It could also result in changing your priorities every time you think you’ve made that decision, and therefore impacting the activities you’re currently focused on. Eventually, this will lead to burnout and more than that – to that undesirable feeling of failure. And if you have a team and are unable to make business decisions to guide them, you will cause them to spend their time in ways that won’t result in the ROI you need to make their hire a good investment. But it wouldn’t be their fault!

How to make decisions

Decision making is a difficult skill. It’s scary. It feels permanent. It feels like all eyes are on you, and any error in your decision will make you as the leader look bad. But actually, none of that is true. The first thing to know about making decisions is that any decision is better than no decision. So even if you do make a decision that doesn’t produce the outcome you want, it’s still better than not having made that decision in the first place. Why? Because now you know that the direction you went in wasn’t the best for your business. If you hadn’t made a decision, you wouldn’t know that. You wouldn’t know anything, in fact. Secondly, having made a decision also helps you and your team feel better because you have clarity. You know what you’re working on. You know what direction you’re heading in. You know what you need to do and why you’re doing it. Lastly, it demonstrates strong leadership skills. One of the things people look up to leaders for is their ability to make decisions. As a business owner, you need to be able to own that space within your business. To help you, let’s look at three major types of decisions business owners need to make.

Decision Making Scenario #1: Your Business Proposition

In this scenario, the type of decision you’re making impacts the business at a fundamental level. What is your business? Who do you serve and how do you serve them? What are your products and services? How do they get delivered? How do you make money? Essentially, this is figuring out your business model. Perhaps you have a ton of ideas about how you want to serve your customers. Or perhaps you don’t. Maybe you know exactly who your customers are. But then again, maybe you don’t. At the early stages of your business or when you’re going through a major change, pivot or adding a new line of products/services, you’ll find yourself in this scenario. There are several decisions that need to be made here, but altogether, they’re your business model. Most people I work with come to me with this piece of their business unanswered and we work on it together.

To be able to make a decision on this, there are three major components that need to be considered: what your customers want and need, what your competitors currently provide and what you can do to stand out in the market. Once you’ve collected the information across these areas, you’ll be in a position to create some options for your business model, and then pick the one that resonates most with you. Don’t just go for the easy one, or the one that feels safest. Go for the one that excites you – the one that gives you butterflies in your stomach and goosebumps on your skin.

Decision Making Scenario #2: Your Business Direction

This decision is the output of the earlier decision (on your business proposition or your business model). Once you’ve decided what you want to do, you need to figure out how you’re going to get there. This is where a business plan or a roadmap will come into play. Knowing where you want to go and what you want to do is a prerequisite. If you’re not sure about that, then figure that out first. Once you have that, you can start crafting your plan or roadmap.

The way I like to do this is to break down my goal into 5 strategic areas: Sales, marketing, product, operations and finance. I then identify what I need across each of those and then break that down into smaller goals. Once that’s done, I can see the roadmap more clearly and it becomes easier to map out the step by step actions I need to take to make it all happen. I follow this structure with my clients. We first get their business model clarified – who they serve, how they serve them, how they deliver the products/services that serve them and how they make money doing that. And then depending on their strengths, their preferences and what feels good – expansive, stretching but still in line with their values – we identify the steps required to get there, starting from the goals and working backwards.

Decision Making Scenario #3: Your Mindset

This last decision is the most powerful one. In order to get anything done in your business, whether it’s deciding to make an investment or deciding that you will fill up your program or sell out your stock, it all starts with the decision. Why? Because what you set your mind to is what you’ll eventually manifest in your physical reality. This isn’t something we grew up realizing, nor is it something we’re taught in our corporate careers. But the world of entrepreneurship is abundant with this knowledge. And here’s how it plays out: If you decide that you will get something, you will unconsciously act and do the things required to make that a reality. It may seem farfetched, but it’s not. You will show up, deliver, add value, work towards, and anything else to make that decision come true – if you truly believe it. But when you don’t make that decision, it leads to an inconsistent set of actions on your behalf. You just won’t show up in the same way.

So how can you decide and change your mindset? It takes practice. It takes being understanding and curious as to why your mindset isn’t decisive or positive. You can explore why you choose to see things in a negative or inconclusive manner. And then, you absolutely need to practice making those decisions. Decide that you will post on social media today. Decide that you will meet a perfect client. Decide that your content is being devoured by all your ideal customers. Decide that your product will land in front of your target audience. Decide those things first and see the magic happen.

Decision Making and You

In the end, only you can take control and start making decisions. Eventually, you might be able to outsource some of these decisions, but when you’re in the early stages of starting and growing your business, it’s important that you shape it the way you want it to be. Start small, make decisions that are easy, and then grow from there. And with each decision, you want to ask yourself: Does this excite me? Does it give me butterflies in my stomach? Does it scare me a little but also get me really pumped? Does it give me goosebumps? Remember, the direction you’ll head in with your business is dependent on these decisions. And so you want your decisions to be expansive and push you without causing you to burn out. You’ve got this.

Was this helpful? Share it with someone else or to your social profile so others can benefit from it, too!

Building Your Business Vision

March 31, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

Building your business vision is the best investment you can make right now. Knowing where you want to go with your business will help shape everything else that follows.

It will provide clarity that will shape your mission, your values, your brand strategy, your business strategy, your customer strategy and customer experience, your sales and your marketing strategies, your product and service development… quite literally everything in your business.

So perhaps you’ve come across the VMV acronym before – Vision, Mission and Values. And it’s quite likely that you’ve been told how important it is to build your business vision. But the value is in whether you’ve actually done it.

Let’s take a little bit of time out today to identify the ways that your vision affects your business – positively, if done right, negatively, if not done at all (or done in a less-than-desired way).

First things first…

What is a business vision?

Your business vision is your North Star. It is the final destination you want to eventually get to. It is the reason you created your business, the deep reason – your why.

And it is this deep reason or “why” that gives you fulfillment.

Most business visions are so aspirational that they might never be achieved, and that’s ok. It’s good to be aspirational. But your vision doesn’t have to be so aspirational that you’ll forever be striving to achieve it. It can be something more achievable. But it is important that your vision be something that inspires you.

Here are some examples of how you can shape your vision statement:

To eradicate [something you work towards getting rid of, e.g. hunger]
To increase / create more [something that you work towards increasing, e.g. female CEOs or founders]
To be the best at [whatever it is you do/provide/create/produce/make available]
To bring [something] to [type of location / people]

Why is a vision so important?

Your vision is the guiding light, the destination, the ultimate goal of your business.

Without a vision, the biggest issue you’ll almost certainly face is that your efforts won’t be aligned. What does that mean? It means you’ll be doing things that move you in some direction, but not necessarily towards where you want to be. And different things will move you in different directions, so your cumulative efforts will be scattered, not stacked. Why is that an issue? Other than not getting closer to your goal, unaligned action means you’ll be busy all the time, but you won’t see the desired outcome from your effort. That in turn can – and most likely will – lead to becoming unmotivated and burnt out.

How does articulating a vision help?

It helps you identify your mission. Once you have a business vision in mind – the destination, the ultimate goal of your business – you can identify your mission. Your mission is the “how” to your vision. If your vision is to help 1,000,000 women start their own businesses, then the “how” describes what your business will be doing to achieve that vision. Perhaps it’s by having a membership-based community that supports and provides frameworks, information and guidance to women starting their businesses.
It helps frame your brand strategy… and your business strategy… and your sales strategy… and your marketing strategy… and your product or service development… and your customer strategy… you get the point. The reason why it has such an impact on everything that follows is because your vision describes your destination. And all the other strategies that you build into your business (like your brand strategy, your business strategy etc) are designed in such a way to get you to that destination, to that vision. [Little side note here: Do you see how not having a vision can result in each of these critically important strategies then veering off their own path? Without a common destination in mind, you could end up creating a brand strategy that takes you one way, and a marketing strategy that takes you another way, and a business strategy that doesn’t align with either.]
It reduces anxiety, stress, burnout, and all the other feelings associated with overworking and not seeing the results you want to see. Why? Because your actions will be aligned. Because your strategies will be aligned. Because your efforts will be created in such a way that they drive you towards your vision. And on that note…
It creates fulfillment. Because seeing how you’re making a positive impact on the thing that drives you is fulfilling. And…
Seeing your ultimate goal get positively impacted through your actions is the thing that will keep you going through the tough times. Because there will be tough times; there always are. But knowing what you’re working towards and seeing how you can and do make a difference is a big motivator. It’s the biggest motivator, in fact.

So, Sarah – what’s your vision?

I was hoping you’d ask!

There is a reason I work with entrepreneurs. I want to help build more heart-based and values-based businesses. I want to see more entrepreneurs and small businesses succeed. I want to create that movement, that ripple effect.

Also, I find that entrepreneurs and small businesses deliver their products and services with heart, with a lot of care, with genuine appreciation for their customers. I want to create more of that.

And lastly, I want to give back and help others give back to non-profit businesses. And I find that a lot of entrepreneurs and small businesses do that. And they do it, again, from the heart.

So, having introduced my background thoughts, this is my vision:

My vision is to create a world where people are successful doing the things they love, delivering from their hearts and making the world a better place.

And now it’s your turn

If you don’t already have a vision, create one. Dig deep. Find out why you do the thing you do in your business.

And ask yourself: what impact do I want to have on the world?

What is a Business Plan?

February 10, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

You’ve got your business idea. It might even already be an up and running business. But you’ve reached a point where you realize one of the following:

You (and your team) are spending time on so many things. In fact, you’re very busy. But you’re not really getting any closer to where you want to be…
Your business doesn’t seem to have direction. Or actually, your business has a new direction every day! It’s getting confusing, frustrating and very tiring for yourself and your team.
You just don’t know where to start. You know where you want to be, and you can articulate that well, and paint that future picture in such a way that everyone you speak to gets excited about it, too. But how do you get there?

If any of the above scenarios resonate with you, then there’s one thing you need: a business plan.

And by the time you get to the end of this article, you’ll understand exactly what a business plan is, and hopefully be one step closer to creating one!

Key takeaways

Everyone needs a business plan.

A business plan is a document that outlines what your business will produce or deliver, and how it will do it.

You can also develop a second, more detailed, part to your business plan which provides you with an action plan outlining all the steps you need to take to get you from where you are today to where you want to be.

Most entrepreneurs struggle with getting their businesses set up successfully because:

They haven’t thought through all the strategic elements of their business, so their business idea may not necessarily be competitive, or even something that customers need (and will purchase).
There is so much to do that they get overwhelmed and do nothing.
They start working on and spending time on things that aren’t necessarily going to get them to where they want to be. This is when people are busy but not smart about what they’re busy doing. It happens a lot, and it’s discouraging, to say the least, when you’ve spent your days working, working, and working some more, but your goals are still so far away.

This is why spending time up-front to think through your idea and create a business plan will go a long way in ensuring your success!

What is a business plan?

Business Plan Definition: A business plan is a document that outlines what your business will produce or deliver (also known as what “value” it will provide), and how it will fulfill that goal.

I like to think of business plans as two parts. You will always need the first part, whether for yourself or for pitching to investors or potential business partners. But the second part is what proves to be extremely useful when you’re feeling either stuck or overwhelmed – i.e., when you just don’t know where to start, or when you’re so busy but not getting anywhere.

The basics of what a business plan is:

You will always need to make sure that your business plan clarifies your thinking, outlines your medium-high level plans for your business, and, if needed, can be used if you’re looking for investors or partners. I’ve outlined what needs to be included in a business plan below.

The extra part in a business plan that really helps you towards making your dream a success:

I’ve found that a business plan which also goes into detail with all the little steps – the action items – that you will need to accomplish to get to your end goal is something that almost ALL entrepreneurs need. It gives you clarity on what you should be working on, how you’re actually going to make things happen, and provides you with a clear roadmap that you can cross items off (or add items to) as you go along. And we all know crossing items off a list gives you that much needed accomplishment boost every now and again, doesn’t it?

So to summarize, a business plan always covers the medium to high level plans for your business (i.e. what you want to accomplish, why it’s a great idea and how you’ll do it). But, if you’re like most people, you’ll want to take it a step further and break down the “how” into action items that you can use to make sure that everything you (and your team, if you have one) are working on is getting you closer to that goal you want to achieve.

What does a business plan include?

A business plan includes several important pieces of information, such as your business objective, your product/service description, a market analysis, a clear idea of who you’ll be targeting (your Ideal Customer Avatar) and your plans and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) across some strategic pillars: Sales, Marketing, Product Development, Financials, People/Team, Operations. Lastly, your business plan should include an assessment of potential risks, and what you could do should any of them arise.

In short, your business plan should give someone reading it a really good idea of what you do (or want to do), why you think it would work, and how you’re going to make it all happen.

Now that we know what a business plan is and what it includes, let’s look at why you might need one.

Why do you need a business plan?

There are two reasons why you need a business plan.

The first reason is to help you get clarity on your business and your strategy. This will help you articulate what your business will deliver, why it’s a great business idea, what your position within the market will be, what your competitive advantage and USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) are, and how you will deliver that product or service across several areas such as Sales, Marketing, Product, Operations, Financial and People (your strategic pillars – which may be a little different from these, depending on your specific business needs).

A business plan is also absolutely needed if you’re planning to go to investors for funding or are looking for someone to partner up with. This is the one document investors or VCs will expect – across the board. So if you’re planning on getting funding, it’s time to start working on your business plan!

But, business plans are also needed to give you clarity. And when I say you, I mean you, specifically! So even if you’re planning on being a solopreneur, and you don’t need any funding, it’s always a really good idea to put a business plan together so that you can get really clear on your business proposition.

And that clarity will prove to be useful across so many of your business areas such as your sales strategies, marketing strategies and copy, business operations and setup, supplier and partner choices, and more. By going through the business planning process, you’ll get really clear on what your business will deliver, to whom, and why it’s a great idea.

By going through this process, you’ll uncover risks you might have missed, opportunities you hadn’t seen, and get visibility into exactly what you need to do to achieve your goal.

And lastly, when you take your business plan a step further and create a detailed action plan out of it, you will be mapping out all the action items that need to be done to get you from today to your end goal. You’ll be able to view which action items are a priority, which ones are dependent on other action items, and which activities you spend time on today that don’t contribute to your goal at all.

How to write a business plan

It may seem complex at first, but trust me on this – a good template and thoughtful prompts, probing questions and experienced guidance will make it easier. If you’re anything like me, you’ll even find it fun!

Action: Write your business plan

If you haven’t yet written a business plan and would like the clarity that it brings, there’s no time like the present to get started! My suggestion is to create the outline first, then start filling the sections in with the information you already know. You can then research, think, decide and refine as needed. Good luck!

If this topic is something that interests you, you’re going to want to sign up to my free Strategy & Business Planning webinar. It’s going to be a live webinar in which I’ll explain the differences between strategy and business planning and take you through both. This webinar will equip you with the foundation you need to set your business up for success so you definitely don’t want to miss it.

Make Your Strategy Actionable

January 19, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

When I worked in a corporate environment, there were two categories of people when it came to strategy – those that were eager to define their strategy, draw up a strategic plan and follow through on it, and those who saw strategy and strategic plans as a “paper exercise”. The latter felt that working on strategy was a waste of time, mostly because it would take a significant amount of resources (people and time) to put together, and then not much would come out of it in the end. It wouldn’t be an actionable strategy. People would go back to doing what they used to do, and at most there might be a couple of new things implemented. But for the most part, nothing would really change.

Now that I’ve started my own business and I get to work with entrepreneurs and small business owners, I see, well, the same! And so I’ve been really interested in finding out why some strategy work just hasn’t made a positive impact on the people who requested it. Here’s what I’ve found. It’s really just ONE thing. Your strategy has to be implementable. Otherwise, it really will be a waste of time and effort and won’t change anything in your business. And, most importantly, after deciding on your strategy, you absolutely should put together a strategic plan that has an outcome that is actionable – something that you can pick up and easily start working towards implementing. This is so key.

So how, then, does something as “theoretical” (as one creative entrepreneur called it) as a strategy become something that you can see and touch and action?

The key is to break the strategic plan down into smaller and smaller items, until you have a strategic plan of bite-sized chunks. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s start at the top.

Step 1 – Decide on your strategy

If you haven’t read “What is Strategy”, do that first (it’ll open in a new tab) and then come back here. The first thing you need to do is decide what makes you different, and use that as the anchor in crafting out your vision, mission and values, your long-term goals, how you’ll compete and who your competitors are, and of course, who your customers are. Those are the basics.

Step 2 – Group your strategy into pillars

Now that you know where you want to go, and you can explain who you are and why you’re different, you can start building some strategic pillars. This is a typical list that you can apply across any business:

Sales
Marketing
Products/Services
Financials
People
Operations

Under each of these pillars, begin writing down some action items – things you need to do to get to the goals you set out in Step 1.

For example, let’s say you run a small Digital Marketing agency. One of your goals might be to make $500,000 in revenue across all your products and services. You currently offer two things – project-based digital marketing services and an online digital marketing course. You split your revenue across the two and decide your targets will be 80% ($400,000) from project-based digital marketing services and 20% ($100,000) from the online digital marketing course.

You decide to use the pillars suggested above (Sales, Marketing, Products/Services, Financials, People and Operations). Under Sales, you set a few goals:

50% of project-based services to come from small/medium businesses
50% of project-based services to come from large corporations
75% of online digital marketing course to come from large corporations

You’re doing well. This is a great start. You’ll do the same for all your pillars, breaking down each one into no more than 10-12 goals. Now let’s move on to step 3.

Step 3 – Break each goal within each pillar into bite-sized actions

This is the part that really makes a difference. When working on your strategic plan, you need to get to, well, a plan! I like to create pages for each of the pillars, and then break those pillars down into the goals, which I then break down into action items. Let’s continue the example above to see what this would look like.

Using the first goal under Sales, “50% of project-based services to come from small/medium businesses”, you can break this down into industries, or even specific businesses you’d like to target. Let’s do the latter. When you make this list, bear in mind that not every one will end up generating revenue, so you’ve got to make a big enough list to hit your target.

Organization: F&B Business #1
Organization: Health, Beauty & Fitness Business #2
Organization: Travel and Lodging Business #3
Organization: F&B Business #2
Organization: F&B Business #3

Now that you have an idea of exactly who you’d like to target to reach your goal for small/medium businesses, we’ll begin to break this down into actionable steps. Let’s do this for the first business on the list – “Organization: F&B Business #1”.

Follow on instagram
Comment & like posts at least 2x week
Collate ideas of how F&B Business #1 can benefit from digital marketing services
Reach out to Sarah who used to work at F&B Business #1 and ask if she can arrange an introduction
Meet with representative of F&B Business #1 and demonstrate how you can help increase their sales at a low cost
Follow up after the meeting

Your list can stop there for now, and you can add more action items if F&B Business #1 decides to sign you on.

The idea is to have a strategic plan that is broken down into action items that are easy to do and do not cause overwhelm – because we’ve all been in a position where there’s so much to do that we just don’t know where to start. This strategic plan makes it easy to know where you should be putting your effort and energy.

How your strategic plan positively impacts your strategy

You created your strategic plan by breaking down your strategy, so naturally you’d expect that the achievement of the action items in your strategic plan will lead to the achievement of your strategy – and you’re right, it should! A little caveat here that if all your leads turn you down, or you can’t get your product to work properly, etc., achievement of the strategy will be unlikely. But assuming you have a good product/service and that the outcomes of the action items are (mostly) positive, you’ll be able to easily complete the goals within the pillars, which will then lead to achievement of the long-term strategy.

Strategic Planning Action Time

If you haven’t spent time building your strategy and strategic plan, you should really consider taking some time out of your schedule, perhaps a couple of days, or a whole week, and working through it. By doing this, you’ll make sure that you and your team spend your time on activities that contribute to your strategic objectives, and essentially, that you don’t waste your time on activities that won’t get you to where you want to go.

What has your biggest challenge with creating an actionable strategy been? Have you had any great or bad experiences with this? Post your comments and any questions below, and if you can help anyone else out, don’t hesitate to do so! As always, if you’ve found this article useful, share it with someone who’ll benefit from it as well!

Giving Your Strategy its Best Chance for Success

January 5, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani 1 Comment

Every now and again – whether because of competitors and competition, an external disruption, an internal change, the new year, or a vast number of other factors – a business will have to adjust its strategy. Undoubtedly, you’ve had to adjust strategy too, at some point over the course of your business. The big question is – did it work? Were you able to successfully implement your new business strategy? If you’ve been through a few strategic changes, perhaps you’ve noticed that some have worked out better than others. Why is that?

Strategy is not Enough

The truth is, you need more than just a strategy. You need to ensure that your organization is set up to be able to deliver against that strategy and to be able to achieve the objectives set out in the strategy. So let’s break that down. How do you assess and then, if needed, set your organization up to deliver against your new strategy?

There are several aspects of the organization that you’ll need to look at. I’ve broken them down below, and provided examples of what you should be looking for. If you find that your organization is not set up in a manner that supports the strategy, start making changes to create that alignment and support. Otherwise, there’s a good chance you’ll find a big gap between your expectations and the outcome.

These are the most important elements of your organization that will provide the support needed to bring your strategy to life.

#1 – Ensure the right people and skills are in place

Sometimes – actually a lot of the time – leaders tend to think that once a strategic plan has been put into place and communicated to the business, everyone will just start doing what they’re meant to be doing with the new strategy in mind. But the truth is, sometimes that new strategy requires people with different (new!) skills, and sometimes even entire teams. So before you build an expectation that your team will be able to achieve the strategic objectives you’ve set out, ask yourself:

What skills are needed for these objectives to be brought to life?
Does my team have these skills?
Do the people who have these skills also have the time to spend on the new activities, or is their time already taken up doing other activities that are also required?

#2 – Provide flexible principles for your team to use when managing new situations or decisions

We all know that you can’t plan for every possible situation or decision that each person in your business will need to make at some point. So instead of trying, it makes a lot more sense, both in terms of your time and in terms of your sanity, to create a set of principles that can guide people within your organization to make the right decisions. For example, if your business is built on great customer service, then making that a clear principle helps frontline staff know to put great customer service above all else when talking with customers. On the other hand, if low cost is what your business is built on, a frontline member of your team may have to make a different decision. Bear in mind, you can’t have it all. Know that there are trade-offs, embrace them, make them known to your team, and provide clear priorities for everyone to follow.

#3 – Take stock of your culture and make changes as needed

Your culture has to support your strategy. It’s an absolute necessity. Think about the activities you’re asking your organization to undertake, and determine the values, behaviors and leadership styles that are necessary for them to be successfully implemented. Are these in place right now, or is your organization currently set up in a completely different manner? For example, if you need your team to be developing more ideas, then you’ll have to create a culture where experimentation (and failure!) is supported – not just passively, but also actively, for example: Do people have the time to create and test new things? Or perhaps your new strategy requires people to work together, but your teams are still very silo’d, and don’t trust each other. Be diligent and ensure that your culture and your strategy align. Even the best strategy won’t amount to much with a culture that doesn’t align to it.

#4 – Make sure the technology and data that is needed for success is available

It is extremely important to make sure that the resources, particularly the technology and data, that a person (or team) needs in order to effectively do their job is available to them. Look through your strategic plan and make sure that you highlight activities that require different technology and data as compared to what is available today. How can you obtain these? In the absence of these, how can your team adjust their activities to still deliver value, albeit not the full value that your future state outlines?

#5 – Re-engineer your processes and activities so they reinforce, support and complement the new strategy

Revisit your processes and activities. These were designed with your old strategy in mind. They supported what your team used to deliver, in ways that made the most of their skills in line with the old strategy. Your old processes may have been perfectly fine for your previous strategy, but that doesn’t mean they’re the right way to do things for your new strategy. Now that you have a new direction that you’d like the business to go in, you’ll need to make sure your processes and your teams’ activities support it. Re-engineer old processes, end-to-end, to make sure that your teams’ time is spent on activities that deliver value, in the most efficient and effective way, for your new strategy.

#6 – Measure the right indicators

When you change your strategic priorities, you absolutely need to review the metrics you and your teams measure, and adjust them so that they continue to bring to light the important measures that you and your team will want to track your success against. Make sure, too, that your metrics don’t clash with one another. Asking a call center team to focus on delivering excellent customer service but then measuring them on reducing their call time isn’t going to produce great results. Go through your metrics, team by team, and make sure they are designed to be supportive of your new strategy.

#7 – Communicate the change at every level

Finally, communicate the change in strategy to the entire organization. You might not need to communicate everything to everyone – it depends on your team size and functions – but it is critically important for everyone to know that a change is taking place, and how they contribute to it. Everyone needs to know and be very clear on how their daily activities need to change in order for them to continue to be an active contributor to the business. Understanding the key principles behind the new strategy also helps people at every level know whether what they are doing is helping or hindering the implementation of the new direction.

Support your strategy with necessary changes

Don’t be scared to change your strategy. Work through the areas outlined above and put the right resources and elements in place. It may not have always gone to plan in the past, but you can give your strategy the best chance of success by setting it up with the support it needs to grow, live and thrive.

Are you working on a new strategy? Which of the elements above do you think could be the largest hurdle for your organization? Post your comments and any questions below, and if you can help anyone else, don’t hesitate to do so! As always, if you’ve found this article useful, share it with someone who’ll benefit from it as well!

What is Strategy

December 22, 2020 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

This article is largely inspired by the HBR article “What is Strategy” by the father of modern business strategy, Michael Eugene Porter.

Defining the word strategy is tricky. Most definitions are centered around articulating a goal and then creating a plan to achieve it.

But the problem with these definitions are that they allow for very poor strategies to be created. Some of these strategies won’t have any competitive advantage – something that Michel E. Porter puts a lot of emphasis on when defining strategy. I have found that Michael E. Porter’s way of looking at strategy is by far the most well-defined and differentiated way. And so, this is the way I have always looked at strategy.

Let’s start by saying what strategy is NOT, which is what Michael Porter does in this article, too. Strategy is not operational effectiveness. What does that mean? It basically means strategy is not doing things more efficiently and effectively. When that is what your strategy is based on, e.g. I’m going to produce a better and cheaper bike, then you set yourself up for a price war against your competitors. When one competitor with a similar product starts selling their product for less, other competitors will look for cost-reduction opportunities and bring their prices down. This is great for efficiency and probably for customer choice and accessibility too. But it’s not great for your bottom line.

Michel Porter defines strategy as “The creation of a unique and valuable position, involving a different set of activities.” In other words, strategy is the identification or creation of a strategic position, based on competitive advantage, which you then use to define your organization’s overall goals and how you will achieve them.

Strategic Positioning

In defining how you’ll achieve the goals, your strategic positioning carves out differentiation versus your competitors either through different activities or similar activities done in a different manner. The strategic positioning is created from one of three possible situations: variety-based positioning: serving a limited number of requirements across a wide range of customers, needs-based positioning: serving a wide range of requirements across a limited range of customers or access-based positioning: serving a wide range of requirements across a wide range of customers within a narrow market.

To explain differences in these strategic positions, let’s use hairdressing as an example.

Variety-based positioning: A salon that specializes in one thing within the hairdressing business, e.g. blow-dries (such as Dry Bar), or perhaps just coloring.

Needs-based positioning: A salon that specializes in non-toxic products across all its services, such as non-toxic hair dye, shampoos, conditioners, hair masks, hair extensions that don’t use glue or other toxic-material bonds, and nail varnish that is 7 or 14-free, meaning it is free of the 7 or 14 top toxic chemicals that normally exist in nail varnish.

Access-based positioning: A salon that specializes in providing services within low-income communities.

What You Won’t Do

As part of the strategy, it is important to also define what the business will not be doing. This is because with any strategy, there will be trade-offs. A poor strategy ignores this and tries to do everything. This rarely, if ever, works. The most obvious issue with this is when your employees or even your senior decision makers are at a decision point but can’t easily choose which way to go because the business strategy actually supports both – conflicting – options, such as a call center that is measured equally against sales made and providing the best customer service.

Activity Mapping

And lastly, we need to make sure that activities carried out within the business are all in support of the strategy. This is done through one of three possible ways, or a combination of the three: aligning activities to the strategy, e.g. low cost is the strategy, so all activities have to align to and support that; reinforcing activities, e.g. because low cost is the strategy, complimentary delivery is not offered; and optimizing effort, e.g. because low cost is the strategy, and complimentary delivery is not offered, a partnership with a delivery company is signed and offered to customers.

Strategy Examples

Using the examples above, I’ll demonstrate how the positioning then influences all aspects of the business strategy, which – as we said before – is defining the goal and how it will be achieved.

Variety-based positioning: This salon will emphasize the one service it offers, such as blow-dries. It will not offer other services. It will perfect the one service it offers. It will ensure that all activities drive the perfection of that one service, e.g. training for staff, products purchased, salon lay-out, booking processes etc. Activities align to and reinforce this strategy. Appointment slots are easier to manage because it is easier to predict how long each customer will need.

Needs-based positioning: This salon will offer a variety of services but they will all utilize non-toxic products. This salon will not consider or purchase any products that are not non-toxic. They will also not offer services for which non-toxic products cannot be found. Purchasing activities are focused on non-toxic products. Marketing is focused on targeting customers who choose not to use toxic products.

Access-based positioning: This salon will be physically located in areas where low-income families live. Services provided by the salon will be less expensive, and therefore the products used by the salon will have to fit the cost structure, i.e. be less expensive than other salons as well. Services provided by this salon will differ depending on the needs of its target customer. For example, extensions using expensive keratin bonds will not be a service that is provided by this particular salon.

Working on Your Strategy

Whether you’re defining a new strategy for a new business, or re-visiting your strategy for your existing business, don’t forget to identify your strategic positioning and your competitive advantage. Can you articulate what that is? Next, identify and review your high level activities and test them against your strategy. Do they support and reinforce the strategy, and each other? If you’re able to do all that, congratulations – you’re on your way to a solid strategy!

You can read the HBR article “What is Strategy” if you’d like to full version of Michael E. Porter’s definition of strategy, which lies in finding and flexing a competitive advantage.

What has your biggest challenge with developing your business strategy been? What will you be doing differently this time around? Post your comments and any questions below, and if you can help anyone else out, don’t hesitate to do so! As always, if you’ve found this article useful, share it with someone who’ll benefit from it too!