Entrepreneurial Quote of the Day:
“The world is moving so fast now-a-days that the one who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.” –Elbert Hubbard
Hello Fabulous Women!
One of the biggest challenges facing entrepreneurs is developing and maintaining a strategic approach to our businesses. Our tendency is to be, at best, tactical in our approach, when we are not being just downright reactive with all the different pressures and issues that arise every day.
If any of that sounds all technical and gibberish-y, let me bottom-line what I mean by reactive, tactical and strategic.
Reactive we all know – that’s when we are putting out fires, busy all day long but not sure what we accomplished at the end of it, feeling unfulfilled much of the time because we’re not even sure what the goals are anymore, much less whether or not we’re going to achieve them.
Tactical – for me, that’s when I’m pretty clear about what are the most important actions – tactics – for me to be doing, and I’m doing them most of the time. Because of that, there don’t tend to be as many fires to put out and I’m making progress, but the big goals still seem very far away. I’m producing some results because I do have tactics that work, but I don’t seem to be getting much closer to Success – you know, Success with a capital S, that thing all this effort is supposed to be creating?
Strategic – and then there’s being strategic in our approach to business. Being strategic means that we regularly take time out from working in our business in order to work on our business. For example, for me it was making a decision last year to focus my coaching on working with women entrepreneurs and creating an expertise in that area, which helped me to rise higher in the search engines for that particular niche, which helped me to find more clients. Strategy means defining the direction and scope of our business, its purpose and values, and creating a plan that uses the resources of our business in a way that creates the best advantage for us consistently over time. Worked properly, it means Success!
Let’s be honest, ladies. It’s not easy making it in business at any time, and with our economy in the state it is right now, it’s a whole lot harder than it was a few years ago. No entrepreneur or business person is going to create lasting success in this environment without a good business strategy to guide them.
Whatever you may or may not have created in the past, if you don’t feel today that you have a strong business strategy, I urge you to consider that this is the single most important thing for you to focus on to get your business ready for the coming year.
I don’t mean this to be scary, I just want to underline – because it’s easy to forget in all the busy-ness of running our businesses and our lives – that success doesn’t happen by accident.
It also doesn’t happen just from working really really hard.
It takes a great plan, a great strategy that you can work from. And that takes the discipline to step back from the daily grind, to talk with other trusted and committed people and to create a plan, a strategy, that will take you where you want to go.
Please ask yourself what it will take for you to create the strategy you need for the success you want in 2009 and beyond. If you have partners or a team to work with you to create it, great! – call them up and get some time scheduled to get to work.
If you need more support, consider hiring a business coach like myself to help you to break through and create your Success. For those of you who signed up for my blog posts/emails but have not yet taken advantage of my free business coaching consultation, please consider that there is no time like the present for taking on your business at a higher level. What a great gift for yourself – a FREE, no obligation call focused entirely on you and your business, and a chance to see if further business coaching makes sense for you. Give me a call – I want to know what Success is for you so that I can help you create it now!
Whatever route you take to creating/recreating your strategy, do it soon and make 2009 the year that you break through and go beyond where you and your business have gone before. Go for it.
–Ann
On Track and On Purpose, Business Coaching for Women Entrepreneurs, Business Woman Coach
