Erin Thomas Wong (00:00)
Welcome back to the Life-Friendly Business podcast. I'm Erin Thomas Wong and I'm here to help you build a business that works for you, not the other way around. And today we're talking about a common misconception that I hear all the time. And that is the strategy...
is for bigger businesses, for more serious businesses, for people with teams, for people that are already making six figures. But here's the truth, your business is not too small for strategy. In fact, having a bit of strategy, the right kind, can help you grow in a way that feels good and not frantic. And it might be what you're missing if things aren't feeling right.
at this moment in time. So if you've ever felt like you're winging it, juggling too much, or unsure on what to focus next, this episode is for you.
So not only do I have conversations with people where they feel like their business isn't necessarily big enough to have to have a strategy, but also I speak to lots of women who've kind of fallen into running a business. You know, maybe they've just started doing the thing that they can do to help people, whether, you know, that's a service or making something. They've started doing it. They've started
you know, earning money from it and time might have gone on, years might have gone by and then they realise, actually I am running a business and I've kind of done it back to front and I haven't got all the foundational things into place. And I work with a lot of women like this, I really love helping them to get those foundational things back in. But even if you did have a lot of the foundational things in the first place,
It's something that we always need to be revisiting to make sure that our business is working for us in the way that we want it to. So when I talk about strategy, I'm not talking about corporate jargon or a hundred page plans. I'm talking about intentional choices and really deciding where you're going to focus your time and energy. And you cannot do that. You can't be strategic.
unless you really have a clear picture of what's going on in your business.
So before we dive into what you need to be doing, I just want to highlight some of the things that might be going on for you. If maybe you're missing this part, maybe you're not being as strategic as you would like to be. You might be busy all the time, but not actually seeing the progress that you want in your business. So you're doing all the things, you're busy every day, but your business isn't growing, you're not making the sales that you need to, and you just feel like you're treading water.
You might be saying yes to everything, all the opportunities that come your way and collaborations and partnerships and all these things, because you've got no clear filter of what actually fits and what would be right for you and your business in that moment. Also, your marketing might feel scattered or last minute. You're posting when you remember or when inspiration strikes, but then when things are busy
or when your motivation is low, you tend to retreat and disappear. You might be offering too many things in your business. This is something that I have always struggled with because I love creating new things. And it's really hard when you've got multiple offers that you need to be promoting. So you need to be taking that time to think strategically about, you know, who each offer is for rather than trying to appeal to everyone.
You might really struggle with knowing how to prioritise and what to prioritise and that really leads to overwhelm and snow globe brain as well because everything feels important. So therefore you're stretched and nothing gets done well. You might hesitate on decisions. If you don't have the bigger picture strategy in place, then even the small decisions can feel really weighty from like what to post on social media.
whether to launch something this month, what you're going to be trying to sell in next quarter, all of those things can really make you hesitate. I do have a great checklist to help you with making decisions. I will put that in the show notes, but it's www.lifefriendlybusiness.com/decision You can download that. You might be constantly comparing yourself to others because...
You know, when you haven't got a clear plan of your own, you're really vulnerable to shiny object syndrome, looking around at everyone else thinking they're doing a better job than you and feeling really rubbish when you're scrolling online. You may also feel that your business does not feel truly aligned with your life anymore. This is where I come back to the fact that we have to keep checking in with this stuff because
our lives change, our kids change, our parents situation changes. So what might have worked really well for you before might suddenly be feeling like it's, you know, it's a weight and it might start to feel like something that drains you rather than fill you up. So we need to be looking at that and being strategic with how we're doing things.
You might be avoiding looking at your numbers. You know, you're not really sure how to measure your success and you don't want to look at your finances because you feel like you'll be too depressed from doing that. And, you know, overall, you're going to be running out of steam because if you don't have a plan to guide you, it's really hard to stay motivated, especially when you're juggling family life or caregiving responsibilities too. When you have a strategy,
it helps give you
It helps quieten the noise around you, cuts through the overwhelm, and which makes you be able to make the decisions that you need with more clarity. So I know kind of the idea of having a business plan, you know, so many people, small solopreneurs
It's like, don't really need a business plan. I'm completely self-funding this. I'm not getting loans out or trying to get investment or anything like that. But it's the strategy piece that we really need to be taking on board because it's going to help us run our business so that it can be profitable, but also life-friendly as well.
So for me, strategy starts with the CEO time. My CEO time is every Monday morning and I block out that time so that I can think about the bigger picture of the business. But sometimes that's not enough. Sometimes I can feel like things are shifting and that's actually happening for me right now.
I'm starting to question some of the things that I've been doing, some of the things that I'm offering, are they still relevant for people? Are people looking for something else right now? know, the way that people are spending is changing, the support that they want is changing. So we need to be checking in all the time to think about when we need to regroup, gather our thoughts and look at our strategy again. So.
Just some really simple ways that you can start being strategic is to think about what you want to do in the next 90 days. This is what we do in The Visibility Commitment and now in The Cocoon as well. I've got a quarterly planning party. We're thinking three months ahead. Sometimes it's so hard to think further ahead than that, but three months is a really good chunk to be thinking and planning out. So think about what you want to focus on, up to three things in those 90 days.
Also, just get strategic with mapping out a weekly plan for what you're doing, for your visibility actions, for your marketing. What are the things that you need to focus on? Take that time to put it out on paper or on the screen. And also, it's about getting strategic with putting the boundaries in place for yourself. You know, making sure that you're not overstretching yourself, that you're not...
scheduling unrealistically, which undoubtedly leads us to feeling like we're failing and letting everyone down in the process.
because the problem is, that winging it and just feeling like it will be okay, I'm just gonna keep going, will lead to burnout. And without that strategy in place, it's easy to just keep being busy, busy, busy all the time and not actually moving forward. So being strategic is not about doing more, it's about doing the right things and it's about doing it in an efficient way so that you don't have to be working.
all the time. That's one thing I love helping people with is put systems and processes in place so that they're not tied to their desk. And when I talk about systems and processes, it's not as scary or as technical as it sounds. So do speak to me if that's something you would like support with.
One of the areas that I know that being a little bit more strategic will help you is with your visibility and marketing, because this can feel like an absolute weight around your neck if you are not planning this stuff out and you're just literally throwing posts out there as and when you remember, when you feel in the mood to. And then when life takes over, you don't have the head space to do that. You don't have the motivation and the creativity to do that. And so...
your marketing falls by the wayside and then you have this, you know, big gap where you kind of disappear from your audience and they go off and find someone else. And then you jump back into it and you're like, why has my engagement gone down? Like, why have my leads stopped coming in? And these are the things that we can easily be getting in place to be consistent if we plan it, if we pre-write things, if we schedule things and all the tools are there in order to help us.
do that. So getting strategic with your marketing is one of the big things that I want you to be thinking about, but you can't do that until you know what your bigger strategy is, what you're trying to sell and to who at what time of year. So we need to be taking this time just to be more intentional. That's what strategy is all about, more intention. And that is what has made a huge difference to the way that I run my business.
And when you have that strategy, when you have a clear plan and you know what you're going to be doing, it's much easier to stay on track and not be taken off by shiny objects.
So like I say, this can stay small. You can start off with your CEO time, just carving out some time in your diary to make sure that you are thinking about the bigger picture. Or you could take yourself off for a morning or a day if you can, and just have a brainstorm with yourself and lay all this down on paper. If you've got a business buddy, you could join up and go and do that. Go off somewhere nice ā and do that for the day together as well.
But also this is what I can help you do in The Cocoon membership. And we have loads of resources to help you really think strategically about your business. That's what my Life-Friendly Business Blueprint course helps you do. And that is in The Cocoon as step one to really review whether your business is still as life friendly as you want it to be, whether you've got those solid foundations in place and how you can be scheduling things and the way that you work.
around those boundaries so that you can run a purposeful and profitable business around your family. So I would love you to have a think about, you know, which areas of your business could really do with a sprinkle of strategy right now.
Hope that this episode has given you permission to really see yourself as the CEO of your business. You are the chief decision maker, therefore you are the CEO, no matter what stage you are at. And you don't need a 10 page corporate plan, you just need a little intention along the way.
If you're craving more support with bringing clarity and strategy into your business, please do check out The Cocoon membership or working with me one-to-one through my mentoring on the website, www.lifefriendlybusiness.com.
And if this episode resonated with you, I would love you to reach out and share it with a friend, write me a review, tag me on social media at @lifefriendlybiz so that we can get this message out to more women. Until next time, keep going. You're doing better than you think.
