We're experiencing inflation.

There's talk of recession.

You're getting nervous.

You're a planner. And you plan top get ahead of this.

A quick search for ideas leads you to countless articles with "5-steps" to take to prepare your business for the recession.

Recession or no recession, there are some things you can always be doing to make your business more resilient.

First, what does having a resilient business mean?

For me it meant building business and financial models that could weather a 128% decline in revenue from 2019 to 2020 and still sustain me, my family, and my business. 

A business that in 2021 could recover most of revenue lost the year prior and increase 2022 revenue by 48% over 2019.

I’m not saying I knew I could make it through the pandemic relatively unscathed and bounce back.

What I knew was that if I was going to own my own business - be my own boss - I had to be clear about a few things right from the start.

• I wasn't replacing a paycheck. It had to do more.
• I wasn't going to live client-to-client or fiscal year-to-fiscal year.
• I wouldn't grow the business at the expense of not paying myself.
• It was my responsibility to make sure the revenue and expenses were managed well.

Were all things things true from the outset? 

No. But it wasn't long before they were. 

And I'm still getting better at creating a business that consistently gets better at attracting my ideal clients - interesting, driven, creative business owners who I can help build sustainably profitable companies.

So what does this have to do with building a recession-proof or resilient business? 

Let's break this down a little more:

MORE THAN A PAYCHECK

I didn't want to replace my income. I started my business to make more money than my current job was paying or a comparable job would pay me in the future. 

When I think about what my business needs to do for me, my family, and my community the answer is that it has to provide MORE than enough.

For me and my family that means being able to generate I want to take home every month to pay the bills,  add to short-term savings, increase retirement savings, and to pay the taxes on my net income.

For my community it means having more than enough to make donations of time, talent, and treasure. 

For my business it means having what is needed to fund operations, maintain a reserve, and have profit left over for whatever I want.

I didn't replace a paycheck. So in response to the pandemic, inflation, or a recession I have more than a paycheck to fall back on.

PLANNING

I know what it's like to worry about making payroll.

And I know how easy it is to spend the money when times are good.

I also know it often feels like you have little control over whether its feast for famine.

BUT you do!

That's why with every client I discuss and often help build financial projections.

By projecting your business into the future and imaging what you want its financial future to look like, you’re able to see beyond where you are to where you're going. It maps the way to turn the desire for more than a paycheck into a reality.

With regard to resiliency, it gets you in the habit of exploring What if scenarios while you have time to be curious and creative.

It takes theoretical revenue numbers and make them real, backed up by business development strategies that require clear actions tied to and aligned with expenses. 

It gives you an anchor that keeps you tethered to your goals even when a storm makes it harder to stay focused.

SAVING

And financial projections are a great tool for figuring out what it will take to save enough money to cover 3-6 months of expenses AND build a reserve from which you can take your regular owner's draw should sales dip, payments lag, or COGs increases more than revenue.

Similarly, finding ways to save time and gives you the flexibility to evaluate your options and make new choices.

By pro-actively managing cash, credit, and savings you increase your resilience and ability to survive a recession.

• Get credit before you need it. Don't just think about banks. Suppliers can extend credit too.
• Refinance and repay debt.
• Build a reserve.
• Manage cash flow. Take a hands-on approach so you know when money is coming into and going out of your business. Some expenses "hide" on the balance sheet. Your income statement only tells part of the story.
• Invoice on-time to get paid on-time.
• Follow-up with people that owe you money. Collect.
• Create contracts with payment terms that get you paid early and often, with late fees and other penalties for when that doesn't happen.
• Cutting expenses only goes so far and you do have spend money to make money. Know what you're spending money on and why.
• Negotiate.
• Look for and leverage economies for scale for buying power (like group purchasing through associations.) 
• Reduce waste and rework. Neither show up as line items on your financial statements but they cost you real money.
• Automate what you can.

Feeling overwhelmed or burned out?

Hoping the proverbial train hits you so you don’t have to make it to the light at the end of the tunnel?

I feel you.

I have a long history of putting my head down and holding my breath hoping to make it to the other side of whatever it is that I’m trying to accomplish before I collapse.

I’ve worked myself sick.

And I know that

It sucks.

It’s not sustainable.

And I don't want me or my clients to keep doing this as we build the businesses and lives we love.

Yes, building your business takes extraordinary amounts of time and effort. It calls on us to be resourceful and persistent. Usually, it requires us to have lots of irons in the fire, running parallel tracks to achieve our goals.

And we are bombarded by all sorts of societal ideas about hustle and start-up culture, unicorns, and college drop-out CEOs.

Yet we have to remember who created the rules of engagement. How one does business today has its roots in how white men created their businesses in the early 20th century. How we finance business today is the product of how white, male technology entrepreneurs financed their businesses in the mid to late 20th century.

This is not ancient history.

It hasn’t always been this way.

And none of these norms were created by or for women, especially Black women who now make up the largest segment of new business owners in the U.S.

Being able to define the terms of engagement - the culture of their business - is the one of the main reasons women start businesses. For Black women who want to lead, starting their own business is often a chosen path when corporate advancement is delayed and denied, when, by definition, the rules of work don’t work for them.

Replicating the norms of businesses built and led by others doesn’t unleash leadership, wealth, health, satisfaction, and achievement. So if we start our own businesses in order to create a life we love, we have to create new rules and ways of doing business.

Of course, our clients may not be thinking about rewriting the rules of business. For many, the status quo isn’t seen as broken. And the behaviors that do the most damage to our bodies, minds, and spirits are culturally defined as the attributes of success.

As a result, everyday I coach clients who struggle to

• set and keep boundaries
• avoid overworking contracts
• resist the urgency of others that pushes them to make fast decisions or commit to unreasonable timelines
• prioritize their own business plans when faced with client demands
• define success on their own terms
• embrace their ambition and demand their economic worth

They deserve to make choices from a place of calm confidence, not fear or scarcity.

Everyday I learn from my clients, friends and colleagues new ways to show up to work and build businesses that honor our need for

• purpose
• dignity
• rest
• challenge
• impact
• learning
• connection
• love

I’m inspired to reimagine work by my colleagues at Gladiator Consulting who are just finishing a two-week, company-wide pause (a purposeful, unapologetic interruption of work) as they prepare to do their mid-year retreat.

And by clients like McDaniel Nutrition Therapy who recommended the the book Four Thousand Weeks which offers a sobering perspective on the limited time we have, the limited control we have over it, and how that clear-eyed approach to understanding and being present in our current reality can help us make critical choices about how to spend time doing what we want and have to do to achieve our desires.

And by my coach, Dixie Gillaspie, from whom I am learning about what it means to be the primary creator in my life and choose to live a life I love.

I believe that by making intentional choices (over and over again) and focusing on creating new systems and structures rather than trying to fix those built by others to serve purposes that do us more harm than good that we truly have the power to transform what it means to own, run, and scale businesses, and redistribute wealth and power.

As a business owner, you're the chief architect of your company's culture.

And it's probably the thing you've put the least amount of time and energy into developing.

For many owners I know, culture isn't one of their top priorities despite the fact that "people issues" take up a considerable amount of their time.

Thankfully, it's never too early and you're never too small to be purposeful about designing your company's culture.

Even small teams and solopreneurs have challenges because humans are humans.

If we agree that culture is the combination of shared beliefs and behaviors about how owners, managers, and employees interact and make decisions, then we can understand how important culture is to the success of our company.

And we can get intentional about

• WHAT our purpose and values are
• WHO shares a commitment to our purpose and alignment with our beliefs
• HOW we want those people to work together
• WHAT we’re going to do to create an environment where everyone can do their best as individual performers and as a team

It all starts with you.

1. Start with the core: get super clear about your purpose and make sure anyone working with you knows

• Why you exist
• Who you serve and how you serve them
• Your vision for the impact your business will have in the world
• The values you think are most important when making business decisions and choosing how to act
• What it looks like when your living your values

Rachel D'Souza Siebert normalized bringing her kids to work meetings and events from the very beginning. As her team grew, so did this practice. If you do work with Gladiator Consulting as a client, employee or contractor, don’t be surprised if some small co-workers join your next Zoom call.

2. Be clear about who does what and how: explicitly communicate (in writing and through direct conversation, training and coaching)

• Your expectations regarding core competencies, responsibilities and expectations for specific jobs and roles in your company
• Document your processes so everyone can follow standard operating procedures
• Use tools like peer agreements and team charters to make working norms explicit and clear
• Overshare. Don't hoard information or share on a need to know basis.

Stephanie Haenchen has a mix of seasoned and young professionals on her team. Her focus has been on clearly communicating the core competencies everyone needs to demonstrate and providing coaching, technology and documented SOPs to support them in working optimally with each other and on behalf of Pace Marketing’s clients.

3. Get to know your people: In addition to technical skills, professional experience, and unique talents, employees and contractors have hopes and dreams, as well as wounds, fears, and basic emotional needs.

• Find out what people care about, what drives them, and what inspires them
• Understand what they want to learn, how they learn best, and the ways they want to grow
• Ask how people want to receive feedback and be recognized for their contributions and accomplishments

Amy Mills is heiress to the legendary 17th Street Barbecue legacy. With two restaurants, a factory, catering, mail order, and new cafe operations to lead, she knows her company is only as strong as her team. When we started working together one of the many things we did was facilitate a conversation with her leadership team about vision and values. They set ambitious 5-year goals that have helped energize the team after a very hard two years dealing with COVID’s impact on the business.

4. Make the "people piece" a priority: Managing people can't be an ancillary activity. People are the heart of your business and need to be treated accordingly.

• Set annual goals for everyone on your team - including yourself
• Schedule regular meetings (bi-monthly or quarterly) to have 1:1s with each person on your team
• Have weekly team meetings - with agendas - to maintain clarity and open lines of communication
• Use communication tools like Slack and/or project management tools like Asana to improve work flow and communication
• Expect to spend the majority of your time providing the people on your team with the guidance, coaching, training, and support they need to perform at their best so your company can grow and be sustainably profitable

Having doubled the size of Roanoke Construction, Kevin Buchek and Mike Duffy found themselves with exponentially more people needing their time and attention. This year has been about investing in their infrastructure through a combination of a mission/vision/values reset, process and procedure documentation, improved use of technology, core competencies alignment, and intentional career pathing to empower their team to work toward common goals as efficiently and collaboratively as possible.

I've lost my car in a parking lot.

I've tried to open the door of a car that wasn't mine.

Each time this happens, it’s because I've failed to pay attention to what was going on around me.

Situational awareness is an underrated and hugely important skill  - especially in a world of distractions.

It allows you to find your car after exiting a store.

And stay safe when walking from the store to the car.

It also allows you to make meaning out of what you're observing and predict what might happen next. 

Psychologist Mica Endsley developed a situational awareness model that explains how we perceive what's going on, make meaning of that information, and then anticipate what will happen next so we can make decisions and take action.

Situational awareness is a common term and concept in the military where honing these skills can mean the difference between life and death.

It's much less common in business circles. We may talk about running scenarios and strategic planning, but we also rely heavily on dashboard metrics that often tell us about what happened (past tense) using lagging indicators. We're not often challenged to make real-time observations, predictions, and decisions unless we're in crisis.

What if you, your leadership team, and your staff all honed your own situational awareness skills and applied them on a daily basis? What would that mean?

First, we all have to agree on what deserves our attention.

What is our situation and what does it mean to be aware? That starts with everyone having a common understanding of the company's purpose, vision, values, and current strategic priorities.

This information alone should give most employees the context they need to make real-time decisions aligned with company goals and culture.

Add this shared context and clarity about one's individual role in achieving company goals to the regular practice of noticing what is happening around them (internal and external to the organization and industry) and you enhance everyone's ability to avoid mistakes, reduce rework, improve efficiency, lower costs, control financial and reputational risk, and to head off potential problems before they occur.

For leaders, it's especially important to hone your situational awareness so you can make meaning out of all the data that's available and use it to make decisions and take action. Making decisions and directing your team on how to take action is your primary job. The better you get at cultivating your future-focus by being intensely aware of what's going on in the present the more likely it is that you're company will be prepared to create opportunities while your competitors react to disruptions and crises.

Situational awareness requires ongoing practice.

You can start by doing the following:

1. Noticing - Make it a regular happen to ask yourself "what's going on here?" Things aren't always what they seem and without getting properly oriented to your surroundings you might try to solve the wrong problem.
2. Grappling - This requires you to wrestle with the information you're receiving and what your analysis is telling you about what might happen next or what you can create moving forward. This is where thinking is doing.
3. Predicting - The idea of prediction puts business owners in the role of creator vs. problem solver. Run the scenarios. Which one do you prefer? What future do you desire and are willing to create? What decisions and actions will that require?
4. Deciding - Action that occurs without intentional decision making obscures what we believe to be true about the situation, what decision is underlying the action, or what decision the action implies. Without focused attention on decision making, you may fail to decide or act, act without intention, or act without first considering what unintended consequences may occur. Make a clear decision and provide the rationale for that choice. Then share it with your team.
5. Acting - Now everyone has the clarity they need to act in focused, purposeful ways to produce the results you desire. These actions will change the situation in some way. As a result, your situational awareness will change too.
6. Reassessing - Your actions have changed the situation, so it's time to reassess. What changes do you notice? What new meaning and understanding do you have? What are you noticing?

Repeat.

Now, where's my car?

Change is constant, so it should be no surprise that despite your best efforts to predict the future, things aren't going exactly as planned.  I'm sure something has/is happening in Q1 that you had not anticipated.

Since we can't stop change, we have to look at how best to manage our reactions to it. Planning gives us an anchor, a touchstone to come back to that reminds us of what we hope to accomplish even if the methods need to change due to new circumstances and conditions.

Perhaps your Q1 brought a slew of new qualified leads and new business. This may have accelerated your plans to add staff or technology and tabled some of your prospecting and marketing efforts.

Or maybe supply chain slow downs are making it hard to hit fulfillment goals and you are spending more time on client relationship management and procurement at the expense of documenting policies and procedures.

Most of us would think of scenario A as a "good" change in plans and scenario B as a "bad" one. In fact, they're neither good nor bad, they’re simply the circumstances at hand.

Both create disruptions.

Both can take focus off the areas of your business where you have determined need attention.

Both can distract you for longer term goals if you let them.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "we had a marketing and sales plan but then we got a new client and it got tabled." I hear this when the owner is now looking at an empty prospect pipeline and wishes they hadn't put off business development efforts yet again.

Or I talk to an owner when a crises like supply change delays is resolved and how they have to ramp up operations to manage a backlog of work only to find that their imperfect, idiosyncratic processes and workflows are causing the same old problems now at a larger scale.

Changes in circumstances may alter how your plan is executed. But it can’t be an excuse to throw your plan out the window.

Because change can also create opportunities.

Cue your creativity: You’ve been handed a great opportunity to use your plan as a lens for shaping your response to change and a guide for creating new paths forward.

As you wrap up Q1 it's a great time to revisit your goals and update your plan based on real-time information.

• Acknowledge how the unforeseeable is impacting business as usual and decide how best to leverage the circumstances to stay aligned to your vision.
• Focus on the things you can control.
• Stay committed to projects you know will make your business stronger and more profitable over time.
• Bring together your trusted staff and advisors to give you new perspectives.
• Give yourself and others grace.
• Slow is better than stopped.

Remember, your job as owner is to see beyond and motivate an aligned team toward a shared vision. That can be harder to do when things aren't going as planned.

But it's not impossible.

Stay the course.

..well it turns out to have been a popular topic and one worth revisiting.

For their February issue, the St. Louis Small Business Monthly asked me to share my thoughts on the biggest challenges business owners face and to offer my best advice for owners.

TL;DR

I think the biggest challenge business owners face is clarity - getting clear about what they’re building, what the business needs to do for them and their family/community, and communicating that vision to their team.

So many other challenges in finance, sales, marketing, operations, personnel, can be traced back to the lack of a clear vision that aligns people toward a common purpose and defined business outcomes.

My best advice: take time to plan and work on your business. Invest in becoming a better leader so the you can give your people the vision, inspiration, support, and resources they need to do great things.

So many business challenges/roadblocks are predicable. That’s why I wanted to give owners a resource that not only lays out what they are but offers practical strategies to overcome what is in your way. You can download the full article here to help you start moving obstacles out of your way to clear the path to sustainable growth.

The other day my client said they didn't see the need to meet about sales strategy.

I chuckled. But they weren’t kidding.

From their perspective the two lead sales people (the owners) were aligned in their approach and since the lead generation/qualification process was so fluid and unpredictable, they saw no point in reading the other management team members into their thinking.

There are lots of reasons I think this is a bad idea.

Which is why I thought they were joking.

To start with, these plans and ideas about which the owners are aligned only exist in one place.

Their heads.

And although they may seem to share a brain, they don't.

It's not like their business development activities don't impact other members of the leadership team and staff. Other people are brought into the process all the time. It's on a case-by-case basis, without any understanding of the unspoken, unwritten plan for how this one opportunity might fit together with current and future projects, sales goals, or desired customer mix.

Not to mention, because the opportunities are coming from far and wide, it's nearly impossible to play out all the scenarios in your head and know which ones are truly aligned with current revenue and profitability goals. Depending on which ones come to fruition, it could mean very different growth trajectories.

Fundamentally, it goes back to the owners defining what long-term revenue and profitability goals they want to achieve AND how they will achieve them. The decision about HOW to achieve your goals in STRATEGY. Or as stated in Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, "strategy is a cohesive response [plausible and feasible immediate actions] to an important challenge."

A clear picture of success - which itself can and usually does change in some ways over time - includes ideas about things like your product and service mix, customer types, geography served, and staffing. These ideas hinge on defining what an ideal client looks like, the criteria for new product and service development, who/what opportunities are a "good fit" , what different growth scenarios will require in terms of adding staff and other resources, and which of those paths you're willing to take at this time.

You can't possibly keep all of that in your head!

Nor can you expect the other people on your team to be able to contribute their best work to achieving your business goals without clarity about where you're headed, the analysis you've done, the decisions you've made, and the variables at play.

Whether it's your overall vision for your company, specific ideas about how to increase sales, or what new products to develop, in most cases the hard work is usually already done. You've already thought it all through.

Now you have to put it down on paper. Then share it with and be open to feedback from your team.

One reason you might be hesitating to put your thoughts on paper is because you feel like it commits you to one path and one path only.

The act of writing things down doesn't tie your hands. It frees your mind.

It captures your best thinking, decisions, and strategic next steps based on what you know today. This includes the other options or scenarios that exist and either why you haven't chosen them or what it will require for you to choose them (pivot) as you move forward. This then gives you a filter through which to make decisions as new information becomes available. You always get to choose how to build the business that fulfills your dreams and desires.

Perhaps you’re resistant to writing things down because you believe your ideas are hard to explain.

Don't worry about making sense in your first draft. Get it on paper then edit and rearrange. Fill in the blanks. See where more thinking is needed or a key decision needs to be made. Make sure your "if this, then that" train of thought is on track.

If it's too vague to explain, more thought is needed. Probably with a trusted team member or advisor.

If it's just too complicated to write down, it's probably too complicated to actually do.

The other reason I often hear is that people don't want to slow down to write a plan. They don't have time. There are too many things to do.

It's hard to know if what you and your team are doing is impactful if you don't have a shared understanding of what you're trying to accomplish. Many busy people have exhausted themselves treading water, going down rabbit holes, and chasing shiny objects.

Planning IS doing.

Ready to give this a try?

Get started by:

• Having someone interview you and write up your responses, then you can edit and refine
• Using a whiteboard exercise to get your ideas out of your head before you start writing or typing
• Grabbing a notebook and writing whatever comes to mind
• Using voice to text to dictate your ideas
• Recording team meetings where you're talking about strategy and have them transcribed
• Engaging a professional facilitator to help you arrange your thoughts and align your team

Did you know, that most small business owners ask for help with:

• Startup and formation
• Navigating government regulations
• Access to capital

And the most commonly offered business services by coaches, consultants, and entrepreneur support organizations are:

• Business planning
• Marketing assistance
• Understanding financials
• Accessing capital

The two are seemingly not quite aligned. Why?

Getting and giving business owners what they want and need is hard. Because it’s complicated. What we need and what we want are often different things in life and in business. In my experience, the most successful business owners are open to new ideas, willing to test their assumptions, and willing to listen to experienced advisors.

Formation: Why It’s More Than Checking Boxes

When starting up, the business owner has an idea, something they love to do, a valuable product or service that others want, a vision for the company they want to build.

Yet, incorporating, getting a name, EIN, tax registration, business license, professional license, and so on are necessary but uninteresting. These are often time-consuming parts of the process. People can get distracted and discouraged before doing all that’s required. Or they make choices that are not well researched on the front end when caught up in the excitement of getting started. Worse yet is that, even with assistance, there are still way too many agencies, offices, and decision-making points to make the process easy or convenient.

Often, the mechanics of formation, registration, licensure, and certification, while tedious and unnecessarily complicated by bureaucracy, are not what will ultimately help the small business owner succeed. Ideally, we would restructure the legal, regulatory, and compliance processes to be streamlined and efficient, available from centralized locations that make additional technical assistance unnecessary.

If business owners don’t have to worry about those foundational pieces, their time and energy can be refocused on planning and processes—the real keys to success.

This leads us to the broader concept of what it means to assist someone with starting a business. Formation and compliance are one thing. Business model validation and planning are another. And those of us in the business of providing coaching and advisory services know that we can help clients improve their likelihood for success if we help business owners avoid common pitfalls when starting a new venture.

It’s All About Your Plan—Yes, You Need A Plan

As a strategic advisor, I consider business planning, marketing strategy, and financial management to be essential components of starting up, formation, and capital preparedness. My job is to help founders and owners do small, fast, inexpensive experiments to test their business ideas. Essentially, we work together to help them de-risk their venture as much as possible and position them to make good choices as they grow and build.

In practical terms, the goal is to avoid things like launching a new product that no one wants to buy, getting stuck with a lease they can’t afford, or offering services that cost more to provide than they can charge. That requires planning and financial projections. That initially slows things down so they can move faster later.

This can be frustrating for business owners who sought help so they could move faster. They can become discouraged when the process of starting and running their own business is harder and more complicated than they expected. Some look for shortcuts. Others expect to be the exception to the rule. They will point to lots of people who (as far as they can tell) didn’t have a plan and are successful. They will ask what is absolutely necessary vs. nice to have/do.

Honestly, some people can get by with less planning and preparation. That’s because the system is designed to unfairly favor those who start with more experience and resources (education, relationships, networks, money). They will recover faster from mistakes, setbacks will be less devastating, and failures will seed new beginnings.

For the rest of us—especially women and BIPOC owners—service providers, coaches, and consultants are trying to close the experience, capital, wealth, relationship, and knowledge gaps so our clients can have a fighting chance beyond formation. We know clients need more than checklists and money. Preparedness is the key differentiator and sometimes the best and only tool available.

Money Matters: How You Manage It As Well As How Much You Have

Money. All business owners want more money. Fast, easy, free, money.

The thing is, not everyone needs more capital. You may need tighter controls on cash flow management, a line of credit, and/or a better marketing and sales strategy.

For those who do need capital, that typically means a loan. There are very few grants for small businesses and in order for a business advisor, coach, or assistance provider to help you access market-rate capital, you need to be prepared. Most money isn’t easy, fast, or free to obtain.

Some of us are actively working to create new capital products like low and no-interest loans, grants, friends and family funds, mutual aid programs, and microloans. Others try to help owners explore earned revenue options to finance their growth. Hence, marketing strategies are one of the main points of discussion. Programs designed to increase the capacity of small businesses to price, market, and sell their products and services are a direct response to the desire of most business owners to access capital and the reality that most won’t qualify to do so. Helping you be better at managing cash flow and marketing and selling your product/service may be the best way an advisor can help you grow.

As for accessing the capital that exists—loans, investments, and a small number of grants—it requires business owners to be prepared to compete for and obtain that funding. Access to capital isn’t an introduction or application. It’s a process.

Accessing capital = relationships and preparedness.

Preparedness = having a plan and understanding your financials, knowing what you need, what capital is available, and the terms and conditions for getting it.

Obtaining capital = demonstrating that you know how to use the money to make more (or at least pay it back), jumping through hoops, and playing the game.

Using capital = investing in people, technology, systems, professional services, etc. that will help you make more money.

The keys to unlocking capital include business planning and understanding your financials, and the ability to communicate that knowledge to others the way they want to hear it. Period.

This isn’t about financial literacy. Bootstrapping business owners know how to manage finances. What they typically lack is knowledge of and access to financial tools and planning that translate their experience into actionable plans and experience communicating their plan in the language of loan officers and investors.

The Value of an Advisor

Knowledgeable advisors know how the game is played and can help you play it. The more you put on paper in advance, the better. Otherwise, the conversation you want to have about money will quickly become one about writing a plan, creating financial projections, and practicing your pitch. Every advisor I know has heard clients say that planning takes too much time, it’s too hard or unnecessary if you just listen to my story and believe in me and my vision, work ethic, passion… that’s not a thing if you want capital.

Some owners know that the system is not designed to make it easy for them to get money so they opt out of the process, choosing instead to grow organically or stay small. I’ve also met owners who are so discouraged by the odds that they don’t have the energy to try, convinced their planning efforts will be for naught. Those who do the hard work to make a plan that allows them to run their business in more sophisticated and sustainable ways always reap the rewards before and after securing capital.

Bottom-line: business owners, advisors, coaches, counselors, and entrepreneur support organizations want the same thing: to build strong, sustainable, profitable companies. In order to show you the money you’ve gotta show us the plan.

No one wants you to succeed more than business coaches and advisors. Entrepreneur support organizations and small business centers exist to help you succeed. Perhaps if we talked more often and frankly about what business owners want and what it really takes to start and grow a business, there would be less confusion about what services are offered and why.

Business owners: ask for what you need and be open to the possibility that the support and assistance might look different than you expect.

Coaches, advisors, and support organizations: explain why and how you have designed specific services to optimize business owner success, think about how to streamline your processes, and when possible, change the system to make it better for everyone.

I’m very fortunate to work with an amazing number of creators—entrepreneurs and small business owners who work every day to manifest the companies and lives of their dreams. Our work together typically begins by delving into their vision and getting a deep and clear understanding of what success looks like for them. Only when you know where you are headed can you find and invent ways to get there. Planning is an important part of growing your business, but there are ways to take your planning to a whole other level. Here’s how I help others supercharge their annual planning.

Start with a Vision

Regardless of the words you use—strategic planning, goal setting, business planning—they all start with a future state in mind, a vision for how the world will look, feel, be different as a result of making specific, intentional choices. Feeling overwhelmed? Not sure where to start? Or what the next step should be? Take time to think about and write down your vision. Then, of all the things you can do, ask yourself which ones will get you closer to your goal, closer to building the business you want. You can use this as a guide:

1. Vision/Goal – The What: Define and describe your passion, desire, vision for your business.
2. Strategy – The How (directionally): A specific plan for achieving your vision/goal (often broken down in years, quarters, months, weeks). Pro Tip: Spend some time brainstorming all the possible ways to create your visions (crazy, unrealistic—all of them), then commit to the 3-5 approaches that will do the most to get you where you want to be.
3. Rationale – The Why: Of the many ways you can achieve your vision/goal (see above) you have selected this strategy because… if you can’t explain why you have chosen the approaches you identified above, it will be hard to execute.
4. Tactics – The How: Specific actions (tasks) that need to be completed in order to turn the planning into action and results.
5. Sequencing – The When: Deciding the order to do things in to get the best result.
6. Measurement – The How Well: We will know we are successful by measuring these leading and lagging indicators (specific to your business) and evaluate whether any changes are needed to our planning, strategy, or tactics.

*Pro Tip: If you have a team (anyone other than you with how you are working to execute on this plan to create your vision), make sure you have shared definitions of these terms. It’s important to speak the same language to avoid confusion. And don’t forget to share your vision and plan with them so they understand how best to help you succeed.

Want to talk through some examples of this thinking in action or what it might look like for your business? Email me to schedule a 30-minute introductory call.

Supercharge Your Planning Process

Pretty standard stuff, right? (Even though doing it is sometimes harder than it looks!) So what will supercharge the planning process?

Believe it or not—numbers. Words + Numbers = supercharged

Even a simple, quick and dirty forecasting exercise, that turns your strategy and tactics into financial end results, takes the whole process to another level.

Why? This isn’t just about aligning your budget to your plan to make sure you have the resources you need to execute. It’s also not just about testing your gut to see if the numbers make sense. It’s about seeing your vision manifest in terms of revenue and profits—dollars and cents.

A budget or forecast makes your vision real. It makes the tedious, incremental tasks that have to get done mean something. It lets you visualize the reward that your hard work (and sacrifices) will make possible. It makes the abstract real.

Financial projections capture your thinking in numbers:

If I do this (my plan: strategy and tactics), I anticipate that the end result will be this (revenue, expenses, and profitability) which will give me more resources with which to create this (my big vision).

One of the coolest things about being an owner is that you get to decide what to do with profits. Reinvest into the company. Support your community. Take care of your family. Give it all away. The choice is yours.

Profits = possibility and potential = motivation and inspiration.

In addition to helping you get and stay motivated and inspired, a simple financial model is critical when things don’t go according to plan. When the situation changes, your ability to evaluate the circumstances and reorient to act depends on 1) whether you’re in the habit of regularly running “what if” scenarios and 2) if you have decision-making tools that help you quickly evaluate options. Your plan (strategy and tactics) plus your numbers (tangible outcomes of strategies and tactics) are part of that toolkit.

Your Vision + Numbers = Supercharged Planning

Clarity of purpose (your vision) helps you focus on the long game. Long and near-term plans broken down by years, quarters, months, weeks, and days help you adjust tactics in real-time. As days and weeks unfold, you may need to make new choices, take new actions to stay on track toward your goal.

Having trouble staying focused or feeling pulled in too many directions? Ask yourself if the incomplete tasks are mission-critical. If so, can someone else do them? If not, take them off the list and ask yourself what next steps you can take right now that will get you closer to your vision.

Hitting your goals faster than you anticipated? You might ask yourself if your vision is big enough. Or what the next best steps are to maintain your momentum.

Feeling pulled to do something new that’s not part of your plan? Not sure if it’s a distraction or a new path forward? Ask yourself if you’re acting from a place of fear or an abundance mindset. Consider the opportunity costs.

And in all cases, run the numbers to see what the impact will be on the top and bottom lines.

Ready to supercharge your business planning?

Purpose First Advisors supports small businesses, growth-stage companies, and organizations by providing strategic business consulting and coaching. Contact us to learn more or to book a consultation with our team.