Why Strategy Fails
Why Strategy Fails: The 'Brake System' Holding Your Business Under £30k per month
Business is much simpler than you think.
The foundations on which businesses are built haven’t really changed in hundreds of years. However, the external factors that affect them can shift and change fairly regularly. In recent years, barriers to entry have fallen away and speed to market has increased wildly with all the tech and tools available to us.
AI has changed (and in some ways made easier) the ways we operate in business. The latest economic situation - depending on which countries are falling out with who and which leaders are making batshit decisions or hiding behind their sofas - can also affect business (think logistically as well as financially) but that will always be the case.
The core business assets and strategies you need to focus on stay fairly static. I’ll cover just a few here.
The 16 Non-Negotiable Business Foundations
Core offer: You need a core offer that you’ve tested and confirmed has a market
Demand Generation: You need to drive demand so it exceeds supply
Social Proof: You need to collect testimonials, case studies and feature results to make sure selling becomes easier and easier
Pricing: You need to use ROI based pricing so your customers can give no-brainer yeses
Offer Ladder: Your need an offer ladder (with free gifts, retention and MRR featuring)
Expert Positioning: You need to be known as an expert at the thing you do
Stay Grounded: You need to remain grounded when success lands - never believe your own hype, don’t become a total douchebag - remember people will never forget how you made them feel and if it was shit, you will fall eventually and they won’t support you a second time!
Lead Generation: Lead generation matters - every single day you need to be driving leads, without them, everything else will crash
Customer Care: Taking care of customers you already have will always be easier than bringing in new ones - nurture your customers, over deliver and wow them (do this without overworking)
Reputation Management: If you fuck up, apologise and make it right to the best of your ability - your reputation is everything and doing the right thing means you can sleep at night
Systems & Tech: Use technology to help you and build systems and procedures that mean you get things right the first time and deliver a consistently great level of service
Show Up: Whether you like it or not, you are the face of your business and you need to show up as an expert - on stages, podcasts, in books, articles, presentations. This helps with number 8.
Consistency Over Novelty: As much as your creative brain wants to create a new offer every week, it’s not effective. Build your core offer ladder and stick to it. Sure, Don’t bamboozle your audience with 52 offers a year - it’s too much choice and not enough consistency. I understand that you love creating and planning but that is in part because it feels safer than actually selling and doing the work-an energy edit can help you with this resistance.
Collaborate: Partner with people who carry the same values as you. This helps you reach a whole new audience that would take so much longer on your own. Give back and ensure all partnerships are fair.
Build Assets: Build your assets as fast as you can to a great quality - your assets do the work so you don’t have to. Think:
+ Email list
+ Frameworks and methodologies
+ Core stories
+ Content (loads of it - people don’t even notice you until they’ve seen 11
pieces of content from you, preferably in 4 different formats and that
totalled 7 hours of consumption)
+ Customer journeyFinancial Plan: You need a plan that includes finances - what are you doing over the next twelve months and why. What are your financial targets and results? You must set goals and monitor your progress. You cannot delegate understanding your numbers. Someone can prepare them but you must take the time to understand what they mean and base your decisions on them, not just how you feel today!
A long but simple list - if you do this you’ve got the bones to a great business.
The Real Brake System Holding You Back
Reading this, you are probably nodding along. It seems right, you’ve heard it before and you’re ready to get this foundation built. But somehow you find yourself scrolling again, watching food prep videos and adding it to your mental to-do list, and poof, just like that, the day is over. Or you spend your day on client delivery and building assets that never see the light of day.
You have a regular conversation with yourself asking “why can’t I just do the stuff I know I need to do?” You get frustrated, annoyed, and give yourself a shake and a reset. Dust yourself down, go again… and still your business results stay the same.
It’s not you…it’s your mind and energy system.
No matter how much motivation you muster, your mind and energy system will shut you down every time. For a million reasons: Fear, emotions, thoughts and beliefs. Some of this stuff you’ve carried since you were a young child, but it’s power is insane.
It can hold you in flight, fight, freeze or fawn and you feel powerless to overcome it.
I get it - because I’ve been there. I’ve seen it in every client.
This was the entire brake system for a client who could not break £30k months, no matter how hard he tried. His strategy was solid - but that £30k/month revenue ceiling could not be broken. Until he gave me 20 mins and we cleared three core beliefs and fears. The next month….Bang, the ceiling was gone! (If that doesn’t have you thinking about the Cillit Bang ad, you are a lot younger than me).
The Fast Track To Unlocking Your Strategy
I can help you clear a fear, emotion, thought or belief in about 4 minutes. We don’t need to talk about it - unless you want to. This is not therapy. It’s also not for you if you want to deal with deep-rooted trauma, for that you need a trained therapist.
But together, we can clear a big chunk of the stuff that is holding you back. While we can’t clear everything in one session, one session can make a massive shift (and in the case of my client above) was enough to create the business results change he wanted.
So if you already have all the strategy stuff I talked about in place and you’re still:
banging up against revenue ceilings
dealing with motivation dips
Experiencing burnout or identity shifts
stuck in inaction or overwhelm
feeling that this business malarkey is just harder than you expected
I can help.
We can work together in:
If you are solid with your mind and energy work and it's the business strategy stuff that is your struggle, head over to From Startup To Exit for tech tools and strategy services.
