Everyone seems to talk about the importance of strategy, yet rarely do you ever learn how to design a successful strategy to grow your business. Because strategy gets glazed over and talked about broadly, developing a business strategy can seem overwhelming and like an unnecessary step that wastes productive time. In reality, strategy is your goal broken down into pieces that become the roadmap to navigate your business to success. If you are serious about reaching your goals, it is a step that you cannot afford to ignore.
Know Your Goal
Before you can craft the pieces of a strategy, you must determine what you want to achieve; this becomes your goal. Then, you begin creating a plan to reach your ultimate goal with specific pieces of the plan to reach success. You start this process by taking the time to sit down and literally write your goal down on paper. What does this business even look like? Is it a laptop lifestyle? Does it involve travel, or do you need to be at home? How long do you have to reach your ultimate goal? Once you have a clear picture of where you’re going, you can build a strategy to get there.
Chart Your Destination
When you have a clear picture of your goal – where you want to go – strategy will get you from where you are to where you want to be. I like to think of this as charting your course on a trip. For instance, let’s say you are visiting a city like New York and you want to visit the Empire State Building. You pull up the map, find the red “you are here” dot, locate your destination, and then you can use multiple methods and routes to reach your destination – the subway, bus, taxi, or walking – you can compare courses, rates, and time it will take you to get there. What you are doing is choosing a strategy to get there that works for you. Then, you can make a decision based on what you need – fresh air, to get there as fast as you can, or a route that takes you near places to eat.
When you know your destination and recognize your needs, you can chart the perfect course for you. That is why strategy becomes your best friend because it allows you to find the best way to reach your business goals.
Plan the Details
Once you know your destination and why you need to go that way, your broader strategy gets broken down into smaller pieces. Following the travel example, this would look like planning the details – What will you wear? Who is going with you? What time of day will you leave? What items do you need to bring with you? These are the sub-strategies that go under the larger umbrella of your overall strategy. These smaller pieces and fine-tuned details allow you to reach your ultimate goal and serve as markers along your path to success.
As the Growth Architect, my goal is to help you develop a strategy that will provide you with the strategies needed to help you reach your goals. If you want to learn more about creating a business strategy, watch my video, and contact me when you are ready to develop your growth strategy!
Beate Chelette is The Growth Architect & Founder of The Women’s Code, and provides visionaries and leaders with strategies, blueprints and results-oriented, tangible tools and techniques that give clear steps to improve business systems, strengthen leadership skills and teams so that you can scale your impact.
A first-generation immigrant who found herself $135,000 in debt as a single parent, Beate bootstrapped her passion for photography into a highly successful global business and eventually sold it to Bill Gates in a multimillion-dollar deal. She is amongst the “Top 100 Global Thought Leaders” by PeopleHum and “One of 50 Must-Follow Women Entrepreneurs” by HuffPost.
Recent clients include Amazon, Reckitt (the maker of Lysol), Chevron, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, the Women’s Legislative Caucus of California Cal State University Dominguez Hills, Shelter Inc., Mental Health First Aid and thousands of small businesses.
Beate is the author of the #1 International Amazon Bestseller “Happy Woman Happy World – How to Go From Overwhelmed to Awesome” –a book that corporate trainer and best-selling author Brian Tracy calls “a handbook for every woman who wants health, success and a fulfilling career.”
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