Laura Tucker

Photographer, Writer, Podcast Host

mindset

How to Improve Your Business Strategy So You Feel Like a Success

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Believe it or not, most entrepreneurs I speak with do not have a well developed strategy for their business.

It’s perplexing because to win at any game – including business – being able to execute a solid strategy is a must.

It’s understandable because many people who own their own business fled or were exited from corporate life at some point in their career.  If you, like me, sat through umpteen useless business “strategy” meetings and you’d sooner stick a needle in your eye than go back there again, I hear you.

But you want to win, right?

“But wait, won’t having a strategy make my business so rigid that I’ll hate it?” fears the entrepreneur.

Why Entrepreneurs Resist Structure

All entrepreneurs are creative by nature.  Bristling at the idea of structure is an inherent trait of every creative person.  Having a strategy does not make you rigid or inflexible – it provides you with a solid framework.  Instead of being caught off guard and forced into reaction mode by the latest disruption or distraction, decision making becomes easier when you have the framework of a clear business strategy.  When kept at the forefront of your mind, your strategy grounds you, enables a more mindful approach, and helps you make empowered decisions.

Grow the Top Line and Manage the Bottom Line Better Using Your Strategy as a Guide

Your strategy is here to guide you in growing the top line, and managing the bottom line as you move forward.

Let’s say there’s an online tool you want to buy.  You think – you know – that it has the potential to make you more efficient.  It’s highly recommended and  you’ve done your research.  Your strategy can help you decide the right time to move forward and make the investment.  The right time is when using that skill or receiving the benefit of that tool is in line with the top priority of your strategy.  The wrong time is when you don’t end up using said tool for six months or more because your true priorities were elsewhere.

When I put together a business strategy with my clients, we focus on three main elements that provide structure, but leave lots of room for creative entrepreneurship:  big picture outcomes, two types of results, and recurring actions.

3 Main Elements of Your Business Strategy Road Map

1.  Big Picture Outcomes

The purpose of Big Picture Outcomes is to align your business with who you are including:

  • your values
  • the meaningful impact you want to have on others and the world
  • what you want to have and do
  • who you need to become in order to bring it all to fruition.

Examples of Big Picture Outcomes:  financial freedom, travel lifestyle, work from any location, become an authority in your field, leader in your community, mentor to others, create a legacy.

Big Picture Outcomes can be intangible because their main purpose is to drive tangible results like sales, number of clients, sources of income, and how you operate your business.

2. Results

Result is a word that gets used interchangeably with outcome, but not in the context of your business strategy.

Results are tangible objectives that accumulate into Big Picture Outcomes.  Results are measurable.  They are either happening, or they are not happening.

Because you can see them, it’s easy to understand why most people think that results are the catalyst that drive business.  Results aren’t the catalyst, but they are the signposts that let you know if are going in the right direction.  And just like when you drive, there are big signs and little signs to keep you on the road.

Two types of results

Big sexy results like signing a new client or a big increase in sales have been traditionally celebrated, acknowledged and rewarded in business.  But there is another type of result that is just as important and often overlooked – the critical smaller results that lead to the big sexy result.

 

Big sexy results and critical smaller results are integral to your #business #strategy. Click to Tweet

By designing critical smaller results into your business strategy, you have more built-in guidance on your journey to success.  When the critical small results are happening, the probability of the big result coming into fruition goes up.  When the critical small results are not happening, you have less influence on your results, and if you don’t correct your course, you may find yourself relying on luck.  The idea of relying on luck for your business results should make you feel very uncomfortable.  But don’t worry.  Help is on the way…

3.  Recurring Actions

The Recurring Actions of your business are what you need to be doing consistently – on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis to create your desired results.  Recurring Actions are the catalyst that determine your results and the life’s blood of your business.

Your results are the accumulation of what you do consistently over time and how you do it.  The more clearly you have identified the recurring actions of your business, the more likely you are to keep on track.  Well prioritized recurring actions are your road map to success.

Well prioritized recurring actions are your road map to #success. Click to Tweet

Just like winning any other game with a score, business is a game of accumulating results. But it’s also about certainty.  Taking action without strategy is like traveling without a GPS or a road map.  When you know exactly why you are doing what you are doing, you’ll do it, or oversee its doing, with more commitment – ideally long enough to get the result.

When you have the clarity that a solid strategy provides, your certainty goes up.

You want to be able to say, “My business strategy is in place.  I know what I’m doing and I know where my business is  going.”

 

How Playful Practice Can Help Your Business

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Are you really making mistakes, or are you on the journey to mastery?   The difference in your results could be as simple as whether you experience practice as work or as play.

Before I learned how playful practice can help your business, I’d become frustrated when I tried something new and it wasn’t perfect right away.  I’d compare myself to another person’s best, not recognizing or appreciating that they had invested thousands of hours of practice and at least as many dollars to become masterful in their pursuit.

Mistakes or Mastery?

In his book Outliers – The Story of Success,  Malcolm Gladwell writes that it takes roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field.  Whether you suffer through your ten thousand hours or play your way through is a choice.

Are you really making mistakes, or are you on the journey to mastery?

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We’ve all heard the mantra “practice makes perfect”, but practicing can get a bad reputation.  It starts early.  In my email newsletter, I shared a story about how I felt about practicing piano compared to my experience of practicing baseball as a child.  Two different environments and activities produced opposite reactions in me as a child.

Practice without play is just hard work

I don’t know about you, but I prefer easy work, or fun work, over hard work.  If you’re not able to enjoy the journey because you are solely focused on perfection, you may be setting yourself for the 3 Fs:  frustration, fear and failure.

In several recent coaching sessions, I’ve asked my client to lighten up and give themselves permission to make mistakes rather than retreat back into their comfort zone.  You need to give yourself permission to try something new and mess it up!  Mistakes are a part of growing and learning.  It’s not realistic to expect mastery from yourself right away.

Lighten up!  Mistakes are part of growing and learning.

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How to get moving towards mastery:

  1. Identify one thing you could do on a regular basis that is new to you and would help grow your business.
  2. Use the magical power of the internet to research 3-4 examples of people in your field doing what you need to do.  This should take you no more than a couple of hours.  Anything more is procrastinating.
  3. Now that you have met your new role models, emulate them.  (Note:  Emulating is not the same as copying.  Use your ideas, your material, your way of seeing the world.  Don’t copy their content.  Emulate HOW they are doing it.)
  4. Take ACTION.
  5. Celebrate!
  6. Go back to step 4 and repeat over and over.

You might ask yourself, “Wait a minute, I’m doing the thing – I thought I was supposed to be practicing!  You are practicing – while you’re in your game. Eventually you will find your own approach, voice, and style.  The important thing is you are taking action, not thinking about taking action.

The important thing is you are taking action, not thinking about taking action.

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Unless you are an accountant or surgeon, your success in business relies on your capacity to move forward, not on your ability to be perfect.  Your playful, imperfect practice is better than anyone else’s inertia.

How to Move Forward When You Realize You are Stuck

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Have you ever looked in the mirror and wondered what it would take to move forward when you realize you are stuck?

If you answer “Yes!” you know what it’s like to arrive at a defining moment.  You have to choose whether to stay stuck or choose to grow and move forward.
That’s right.  It’s a choice.  It’s YOUR choice.

If you are feeling stuck, it’s time for you to grow.

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The key is now that you’ve acknowledged this frustrating feeling, what are we going to do about it?  Fortunately,  I’ve become really good at getting myself unstuck, and even better at helping others move forward!

Here are five steps to help get you moving forward when you realize you are stuck:

Step One:  Choose Awareness

The moment you first become aware that you are stuck is critical.   Once you can see it from the point of view of an observer, you create a space between you and your immovable state.  Awareness is the first step of learning.  If you can’t see it, you can’t change it.

Step Two:  Stop and take inventory

It’s time to stop your mind from reeling out of control and take inventory of the facts.  Why are you feeling the way you are feeling?  Where are you out of alignment with your values or your dreams?    It’s time to get real about your current results and own them.  Your current results are an accumulation of how you’ve been thinking, feeling and acting.  If you can accept that they are your creation, then you empower yourself to create different results.  As soon as you begin to upgrade your thoughts, feelings and actions, you will start seeing different results.

Your current results are an accumulation of how you’ve been thinking, feeling and acting.

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Step Three:  Review your ENVIRONMENTS

If you are going to get unstuck and become the Chief Happiness Officer of your life, you have be surrounded by winning environments.

  • How is your body?  You mind?
  • How are your finances? Your relationships?
  • When was the last time you did something purely creative?
  • When was the last time you stepped out of your comfort zone?
  • Are you truly focused and productive in your business, or are you mindlessly wandering from one distraction to the next?
  • Life is an energy management game.  Where are your energy leaks?

Step Four:  Make the decision NOW to become unstuck and FEEL GOOD about it

Being stuck means it’s time for you to grow.  The decision to become unstuck happens in a single defining moment.  It’s a moment you will be able to look back on with gratitude, because it is when the shift happened.  From there on, it’s your job to support your decision to grow.

The decision to become unstuck happens in a single defining moment.

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The feeling is everything:  if you don’t feel better for having made the decision, then you haven’t gone deep enough.  If the energy of being stuck is still hanging around, then getting your new results is going to be more difficult than it needs to be.  It’s worth it to take a step back and go deeper.  Get help from a third party like a coach or a therapist if necessary!  Feel better now.  Do not wait to feel better until after the results have come in.  It doesn’t work that way!  All of your belief, effort and growth must happen before the result can come!

Step Five:  Take ACTION

Do something to show yourself that you are committed to this new path of bigger, better results.  I’m not talking about impulsive action.  The action you take and the subsequent decisions you make need to be consistent with the decision you have made.  If you need to upgrade your skills, read a book or take a course.  If you plan to become physically fit, join a new fitness class or gym.  If you need more time in your business, surf the internet less.  If you want to accelerate the growth of your business without reinventing the wheel, hire a coach!

The best way for you to move forward when you realize you’ve been stuck is to make the decision to change, feel good about it and follow through with action. The road ahead may be uncertain, but your destination will be worth the effort!

Free your mind – Deal with your tolerations!

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Tolerations…you may not call them by name, but you know what they are. Thomas Leonard, the founder of coaching, described tolerations as “things you are putting up with.” Tolerations come in many different forms, including people, situations, yourself, and your environments. We all put up with stuff, so we are all tolerating. There are times when your tolerations are staring us in the face, but many will fade into the background of our subconscious where they become ingrained and expensive chatter.

The role that tolerations play in draining our energy and zest for life cannot be understated. There are immediate costs like discomfort, loss of energy and unnecessary effort. A second kind of cost of a toleration is an opportunity cost. Our body and mind are too busy dealing with our tolerations.  Consequently, we miss the opportunity to be fully present and responsive to opportunities that come our way. This type of cost is impossible to measure and very expensive.

The role that tolerations play in draining our energy and zest for life cannot be understated.

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A collection of our environmental tolerations reared their ugly head recently when we began the process of putting our house up for sale. Small repairs, crooked landscaping border, office clutter, nail holes, cupboard dings, and 99% completed projects like that one piece of unpainted trim in the bedroom… What could have been an elegant process became a list of seemingly endless projects. Ugh.

This experience has been a great reminder of the importance of freeing ourselves from environmental tolerations. There is no such thing as a little thing. Our space and our thoughts about our space can be transformed. Instead of walking in to the bedroom and having my energy go to the door frame, even for a nano-second, I can appreciate the beautiful work that transformed the room into our space. When I open a kitchen cupboard door, the wear and tear has faded to the background now that the maintenance is done.

Think of your own house, office or vehicle. What are your environmental tolerations? Can you feel the energy drain from your body when you think of them?

Think of your house, office or vehicle.  What are you tolerating in your environment?

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Here’s the timeless question when it comes to a living or working environment: if it’s not good enough for others to see, then why is it good enough for you?

So, straighten those pictures, patch up the nail holes, clean under the kitchen sink and unclutter those closets. By giving a little bit of time each day or week to “zapping” our tolerations, we create an environment that supports us. We are all worth the effort of ridding ourselves of these tolerations in one of our most sacred environments, our home. Now, we can truly have a relaxing and restorative experience in a place that is a true reflection of the very best version of ourselves.

Now, on to my office…

Let’s help each other! What are some environmental tolerations you need to zap? OR What do you do to stay on top of your environmental tolerations?

 

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