276: Strategy is Key for Longterm Success 

Michele Williams: Hello, my name is Michele and you're listening to Profit is a Choice. I am so excited about our podcast today. With me is Courtney Bramlett. She is the director of marketing and operations here at Scarlet Thread Consulting and she's also the owner of her own company, The Good Sewer. Courtney and I are going to have an in-depth conversation about strategy, why we need to have it, and roadblocks that we see when people don't have a strategy, and we will share a little bit about the programs that we have coming this year that are available to help you all with strategy. I hope if nothing else, by the end of our podcast together today that you will have a deeper understanding of why strategy is important to the overall long-term success of your company. Enjoy the podcast.

Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company, financial health and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice.

Hey Courtney, welcome to the podcast.

Courtney: Hey Michele, how are you?

Michele Williams: I'm great. I am so excited to chat all things strategy with you today.

Courtney: Oh yeah, that's a big topic we've got to cover.

Michele Williams: It is, you know, it's been interesting, we've been doing a fair amount of one-to-one strategy sessions, like all day, day and a half with our clients that are coming in. One of the offers that we have this year is we'll sit down and help you build out the whole strategy or at least a good port, as much as we can get built out in a day. But I'm talking like super focused. It has been, I know I've been like, just giddy at the end of the day or even as things are coming up and you're right there with me, you know, working right alongside us, trying to get it all done. I'm curious before we jump into the questions and the discussion we're going to have, what's been your take on sitting through and participating and actively assisting me in the coaching, especially in the marketing side, what has been your feeling of these days?

Courtney: Oh, that's a great question. I think one of the biggest, like, aha moments or takeaway moments for me is that it really makes sense now why 90% of the business owners that you talk to are burnt out. They have fallen out of love with their business because they're just, they're doing the same things over and over and over again and they don't feel like they're achieving anything. And a lot of it is because maybe they've set these big goals. You know, one of our clients we just did a strategy day with, she was like, well, I just thought this was just goal setting. I thought my strategy was just setting some goals down. And then all of a sudden, in 12 months, they wonder why they haven't been able to hit these goals. It's just repetitive year after year, the same monotonous process, and that can burn you out quickly. And the true strategy is much, much deeper and more granular than that. When it's understood and done well, then your day-to-day becomes easy. When seeing these business owners transform from big, high-level goal setting to then actually having a yearly, six-month, quarterly, weekly, daily list of action items to get there, there, get them there, it's like a light bulb for them.

Michele Williams: Yeah, you know, it's so true. I think about it in terms of like, working out. I don't wake up one day and say, oh my gosh, I'm going to have the body I had in my 20s, and poof, there it is. It's made especially now that I'm on the menopause train, you know, past that menopause. But the thing is, it is an every day what am I eating? It's a decision of how am I working out, Am I getting in my cardio, am I weightlifting? Or are my hormones playing in the sandbox together? Am I drinking enough? You know, all the things that's like a full, like, lifestyle. Am I doing all these things to then help me feel healthy and good and hopefully to have a body closer to the 20s, but not really, but you know what I mean. But in other words, it's a whole listing of daily, minute-by-minute decisions and choices and actions that are leading me to that body. And what's been interesting to me is, and I don't say any of this judgmentally, I think we've not been taught this. I think there's been a gap in understanding.

Courtney: Agree.

Michele Williams: So many people are asking questions like, you know, they're looking at things in silos. Let me back up and say it that way. They're very much checking out their business in silos. Here's the marketing arm, here's the financial arm, here's the operations arm, here's maybe the HR arm. Here's the client part. They're looking at things very siloed and not at the interdependencies of how all these things work together. You know, I've had people come to me and want to make, and it happens all the time, so, again, no shade being thrown, but they're coming at me saying, I want to set my financial goals for the year. I want to do these things. This is the money. I want to be profitable. I want to make the money. I got it. I hear you. And I'm like, but what are the choices that get you there? When we look at a P & L, I have said this before, the P & L is not just making up a story. It is the numbers that represent all the choices. So, if we want different numbers or the same numbers, we've got to go back and look at the choices and the decisions and do the same thing or not do the same thing. And so, the same is true with strategy. Strategy is what informs. It's making decisions in advance to say, when this happens, this is what I'll do. I love “The Queen's Gambit”. We've talked about that on the podcast. You know, where she's laying in bed at night playing out chess moves on the ceiling, in her brain. The strategy of if they go here, I'll go here. If they go there, I'll go there. If they do this, I'll do this. Like, thinking in advance of what could happen. What will I do? What is the risk? What is the outcome? It's a much bigger way of processing and thinking about information. I think it's a muscle that we've not been taught to use because people are out there calling you, hey, I need to increase my marketing. I need to have better marketing. And you're like, okay, but what is the show? What are you trying to get? What is the goal? What are you trying to do? And we're just missing that elementary building block that informs us about everything we do. Our financial plan should be built on the strategy. Our marketing plan should be built on the strategic plan for the company as a whole. Our HR and our hiring should be based on what are we trying to accomplish and can we afford it and what can we do. All these are so interconnected.

Courtney: Yeah, that's a good point on the marketing front. So many times, business owners know they need marketing, they want marketing, but they don't know what their business can support in terms of finances. What can they afford? How long can they afford it before it starts getting that return? You know, a good marketing strategy in place takes a couple of months to really start reaping returns. Same with any initiative across all those different siloed pieces, the way they're looking at them siloed, the main functions of the business, it takes a while for those to get put in place. And I think also with the strategy, it kind of shrinks the big focus. I think a lot of times without that strategy, we think we've got to go big in all areas. We've got to have a top-notch HR, top-notch marketing, top-notch sales, top-notch client onboarding, gifting, all these things. But it needs to align with where you want to go and do it at an achievable pace. I think that's the big thing because we set these huge, huge goals and then we forget and realize that, okay, we want to increase by 40% on our top-line revenue. I know a lot of people whose main goal is how do we increase our revenue coming in the door. But that takes a lot of work. But if we can increase by a hundred thousand, and have clear action items every day, at least we're making progress. And I think that's the big mindset shift. It's like progress having those action items over just, oh, well, I set an intention to increase my revenue, I've set my goals. I feel great for the year and then in 12 months we're kind of panicking again like gosh, we didn't hit these goals that we set last year.

Michele Williams: I love the book; we've talked about it. We've actually, in a lot of our coaching, “The Gap and the Gain”. And it's so good with that. It's talking about not setting up your goals against an ideal, but setting up against things that you can actually do and achieve. Kind of smart goals, you know, we talk about is it truly attainable. I think that's a piece that we think that everything's got to be so great right now. And the truth of the matter is we have a limited amount of energy and focus and so we have to choose where we are going because we've still got to support our clients in the middle of it. I mean, I know even in my own business we do these same things. You do it in your separate business, as well. We're going, we can't do everything at one time. So, what can we put in a holding maintenance pattern so that we can focus over here? Once we've gotten that to, you know, an elevated perspective, how do we come back over here? In the financial health quiz that I have on my website, if anybody's listening hasn't taken it, go take it. But one of the things at the end is, I say to you, you can't solve all this. There are 20 questions. You can't solve all of these at one time. So, look at the things that are 3, 4, and 5 and let them hold. Go look at the ones and twos and try to get them up to three. Once you get everything to three, then start elevating up to the fours and the fives. But there's no reason to spend more time on a five kind of thing that we have just because we want to be great at it and let everything else be at a 1. And that's the way it kind of looks like in our businesses as a whole. We've got to choose their levers, and we're moving so that the whole business is kind of elevating together. Not one area is up here and the rest of them are down there.

Courtney: Yeah. And I know we've talked about the kind of the potential future state of where people can be if they have a good business strategy in place. But from your perspective, what are some of the key components of a successful business strategy that they can execute, and it should deliver them results within the next, you know, six to 12 months or whatever that time frame is that they have it set on?

Michele Williams: You know, it's going to sound so elementary. It just is. I'm going to say it, and people are going to roll their eyes, and I can't believe I'm listening to this podcast. Click us off. Not true. Hang in there. It is knowing who they are and being very clear on what they want. And I think sometimes we're not so clear on those things. We think we are, but we're not. I can remember as a little girl, my mom would say things like, now, when I would go off to school, remember who you are. In other words, act appropriately for who you are and what's expected of you, and how you're supposed to be. And she would tell me, choose your friends wisely. I mean, I would think most of us have heard these quips or these small things that parents say to their children. Choose your friends wisely. You know, watch what people are doing. Make sure that you're in the right place at the right time and not the wrong place at the wrong time. So little things like that, well, the way that translates into businesses, if I don't know who I am in business, you've heard the other one, it says if you, if you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything.

Courtney: Yeah.

Michele Williams: And so, it's kind of very similar to that. There are options that come at us all the time. I've actually been thinking about this activity and by the time this podcast comes out, I may have tried it already. We'll see. This is what it would do. I would buy multiple sets, like little tiny sets of the same LEGO pieces. I would take all the directions away. I would give everybody the exact same LEGO pieces and tell them to build something. My guess is if they didn't see each other no two people would build it exactly the same.

Courtney: Yeah, yeah, that’s a great example.

Michele Williams: That's right. Now, if I gave everybody the box and the directions and here's what it should look like, they can all make it look the same. But left of their own devices, they may put pieces together differently. That is the uniqueness that we bring to building our businesses, we're all going to have building blocks. We may put them together very differently. So, if you've got that visual in your head, the building blocks are who are you? It's your why? Why do you do what you do? Why do you get up in the morning? Why do you go to work? Why do you continue when it's really hard and you've been kicked down a few times? Why. Why are you building a business versus going to work for somebody else? Why do you feel like there's something you need to put out into the world that needs to be done in a specific way that you couldn't go get under the umbrella of somebody else? There is something driving you. So, what is that?

Two, what is your vision which is very connected to the why? It’s long-range. What are you trying to put out into the world? And then what is the mission? How are you going to actually affect that change happening in the world? What are you going to do and how you're going to do it?

But then it's what is it that is most valuable to you? So, what are the values that you're bringing into this business? Because all of those things are the independent Legos that you were putting together other than in a specific way that is going to show that this is how you're in the world. So, it's not going to look just like anybody else's, even though it has the same pieces as other businesses.

Then it is what is the culture you're trying to build within your company? What is the ideal product or service that you're going to put into the world? And who is it that needs it? So, it's the buzzwords, which I'm sad that they've become so buzzy that people kind of just kind of jump over it. But the more that we get almost dedicated, Courtney, to those items, it can put on like blinders for a horse so that we can go down the path that we need to go down without over comparison to other people. We can stay focused. They say what you focus on increases. So, we can stay focused because we are doing what we need to do as opposed to always worrying about what the people around us are doing or getting distracted by the shiny object syndrome and doing things that are the on the next podcast or on the next book, in the next book or in the next blog or that we see on Instagram or social. So, the basic building blocks are knowing who you are, what you do, who you serve, how you want to serve them, how you want to show up, and what you want your day-to-day to be like. Then we take that, and we start strategizing further into what is it going to take to do that. What are the actions I need to take in marketing? Who do I need to hire? We're planning out, but it's to keep that core exactly what we're dreaming for it to be.

Courtney: Yeah. I think that's where a lot of people kind of hit the brakes or get stuck. It’s like you said, these buzzwords. Because everyone teaches and understands, like, okay, I have got to get some of these things in place. Like, I need to know who I'm serving. I need to know what their problem m is. I need to know who, you know, what I value, what my why. But then nobody teaches or nobody's taking that and then translating it into action in their business. This is where the true strategy comes into place. We take these and then it helps us decide what are the key objectives, and what are we going to run after in our business. So, if you could talk a little bit about that process. And I know we do this in our strategy days. We start identifying, identifying those areas we just talked about. Then we go into, okay, well, how are we going to take the 50 things that you want to do in your business that seems like the right move for you, and then how do we consolidate those, shrink them, prioritize them based on those things we just defined?

Michele Williams: So, I'm also certified in “Fix This Next”. One of the things that I love about that framework is there are different stages to business, and there are different things that we're learning. In the first stages, it's very much about sales. We've got to prove that we've got to have sales, because all of these things sound great, and this is exactly where the siloing starts to happen. We've done that marketing work of our mission and vision. Very marketing. Rah, rah, reh. Let's put it on the shelf now let's go over here and do the work. Let's do the design, let's make the window treatments, let's upholster, let's create art, let's, you know, do architectural drawings or building buildings. That's separate from all of this, and they're not. And so, when we are looking at Fix This Next model, it starts with sales is where we have to have our proving ground. That is the lifeblood of the company because that's what's bringing in the money that then affords us, unless we've had a loan of some type, that's what gives us the money to go forward and to do the things we need to do. But if we're in that sales portion of the business, that part of the life cycle, we're going to be looking at how fast are we getting sales. Our strategy may be built on getting more sales, bringing sales, and it may be so focused there. If it is, then we've moved up the chain if you will, and we're now focused on profits. It's going to be all right, we've got sales, so maybe we can put that on maintenance, and let's look at profitability. Are we managing the money properly? Is it being spent properly? Are we budgeting properly? Are we doing the things we need to do so that we're using the money wisely, then that might be where we focus. Let's say that we've got ourselves on lockdown. We've got our profitability on lockdown. We're going to start looking at order. What is the order in the company? Do we have the processes and the SOPs, do we have all the things set up so that this can be running a bit more efficiently? We're going to be looking at efficiencies at that point.

Courtney: Yeah.

Michele Williams: Once we have that done, if those are the things when we're building strategy, we're going to start looking at impact. What is the larger impact that we're trying to make internally or externally? What are we trying to do? Maybe we're trying to impact a larger area? So instead of just working in our local area, we're trying to start traveling, we want to start doing things overseas or on the other side of the country or different things that we want our impact to be larger, our footprint to be larger. That then informs the decision-making.

And then lastly, legacy. If we decide that we don't want to just flip the lights off at the end of the day, then what we're going to be doing is strategizing based on what is that management turn. Who's coming in behind me? Is everything set up for me to sell the company? Is everything set up for this to be either an ESOP, like employee-owned or family-owned or something? We're looking at that legacy getting us out of the day-to-day operations so that the business continues on without us. And so, it's really about who you are, what do you want to do, what do you want and what stage of business are you in so that we can start evaluating each of those areas. Because each of those areas, honestly, Courtney, touch marketing, they touch HR, they touch communications, they touch your clients, they touch everything. We just need to know where in the whole process you are, so we know what the next thing is to focus on.

Courtney: Yeah. And then, let's say they get an idea of where they want to focus, like how does the strategy then become more bite-sized so it's very clear to them? I know we talked about OKRs and KPIs, I'm sure you'll touch on those, but how do we take this bigger vision and goals? We've kind of prioritized some of the big things that we want to do based on where we are on the five levels of the Fix This Next. Then how do we turn that into more bite-size where we know, okay, when we reach this, we know that we have reached this goal that we put in place and that we're moving towards that end goal, the strategy that we put in.

Michele Williams: You know, this is one of my most, well, I would say it's one of the most fun parts of that strategy day. It's one of the second or third most fun parts because I'm like trying to think of which piece I don't like. And I like it all so much because there are so many ahas all the way through. So, one of the things I like to do, and you and I both have found this to be very beneficial, is not to edit. Sometimes we so edit ourselves because we're trying to take information and slot it before we're even giving the idea time to breathe. So, we go through a kind of breathing goal-setting exercise. Meaning we don't care when you want to get this done, instead list out all the goals that you have. Just list them.

Courtney: Yeah.

Michele Williams: So, we get this long-running list of all the goals. We all know that they can't be done in one year, but if we're trying to slot things where they need to be done, it's going to shut down that free flow of thinking and idea generation. So, we just write it all down. A strategic plan is meant to be over multiple years in most cases. It certainly is going to be the most detailed in the year that you're working in. But I would say a good three years out is probably the goal but five you can do it. It gets fuzzier out there. But let's just say three for a minute. It. So we have them write every single goal down and then we say, okay, so you want to have every bit of this accomplished at the end of year three. Yes. Okay. What do you need to have done by the end of year two? Where do you need to be? Which of these things honestly could be done in year three, which could be done in year two, which could be done in year one? That exercise is really about creating priority order. It's about what can maintain while this needs to improve. What can maintain while this needs to improve or what? Or what can have more of a minimum improvement while this needs an overhaul?

Courtney: One of the really quick. I'll butt in. One of the cool things too, when you do that exercise is some of the things the business owner or the team, whoever's with them during that strategy day is the things that are that are keeping them up at night. Sometimes those things are not big on the priority list in the grand scheme of where they're trying to go. Or one of those minute tasks that keep you up at night could be something that's easily offloaded or outsourced for someone who makes a lot less than that business owner does on an hourly basis. I thought that it was super cool to watch them prioritize and almost like visibly see them take a deep breath on some of those big, big tasks that they thought were so consuming in their brain. They're like, oh, this actually doesn't bring me revenue. It doesn't get me closer to my end goal. I can deprioritize this in my mind and, you know, re-shift some things. That's really cool to watch them do that.

Michele Williams: Yeah. And so, whether it's, you know, you're sitting at home with a big white piece of construction paper or whether we're on a whiteboard in our 1-1m meeting, that's exactly what it is. That's why we free-flow the ideas and don't stop them. Just write it all down. Then now that it's outside of our brain, we can take it and start to prioritize it and put it into order. And you're right, they literally can start creating the order almost. It's almost instantaneous.

Courtney: Yeah.

Michele Williams: They can start to see when they're looking at everything on equal footing, just written down beside each other, they can start to pull things and move it around. So, to go back to answer your question, we start by looking at all the things that need to be done. Then we break it down into years and then we take the years, and we break those down into quarters. Mostly in the maybe the year that you're in and a little bit in the next one. I don't really go into quarters of year three. I mean, we can, if we have to. But we're usually so focused in the year that we're on and things kind of can move as we go through. Priority can shift, which is why it's a living document. You keep going back to it, but to follow the train a little more, we break it down into quarters. I'm a fan of the book, “The 12 Week Year”. That's a great book and it talks about how if we put everything down to get it done in a year, then we're going to wait till November, or December to try to get it done anyway. But if you can look at every 12 weeks or every quarter is as if it is a small year, like to trick the brain. Then we start getting things done. “Traction” is very similar. It talks about quarterly goals and big rocks and all the things. But what we do then, Courtney, is we get the quarterly goals. The quarterly goals get broken into what needs to be done in the month, like month three. And then it gets broken down into weeks and days. And so, when you can take it and see back to the initial thing that we talked about when we started the conversation. I don't just wake up with a 20-year-old body. I've got to choose what I eat, I got to choose how I exercise, I got to choose the, you know, the drinking of the water and taking my vitamins and all the things that's those day to day tasks that over time build up to the weekly to-do list or checklist that build up to the monthly metrics, that build up to the quarterly goals that then solve the problem for the year and get us closer to the strategy. So, it's breaking it all the way down. And honestly, even after that I would go a step further, it is deciding who's going to do each of those things when it needs to be done and when we're going to go back and measure it. Then being consistent. They actually say you get what you inspect, not what you expect, and measure what matters. So, it's really forcing us to define what is done, what is it going to look like, when are we going to measure it, and who's going to do it. So, they don't just end up being these tasks that should be done. They're tasks that get put on somebody's to-do list and they're held accountable for doing it. That's where the gains happen.

Courtney: Yeah, that's a cool piece too. And I definitely encourage anyone who's listening. If you have a team like when you list out those tasks, try to delegate those, and do them well of course. Delegation takes time and effort. But who on your team, maybe you need to give someone a little more ownership. Maybe they're asking you to have more ownership and new roles. The smaller things that aren't so impactful like start to delegate those and let other people own them and then for your sake and your sanity, you're not just creating yourself a 50-item task list for the quarter, try and delegate some of those items and then you can really start to test who on your team can execute and then maybe you delegate some more. But I thought that was a good piece on that too. You don't have to do all of those items yourself. And then in a quarterly span, because I think this is another kind of misconception. Everyone tries to shove everything in one quarter, then they hate themselves for not hitting it and then they try and it just gets into this shameful pattern.

Michele Williams: Right. And exhaustion.

Courtney Bramlett: Exhaustion. Yeah. I love when you said, you know, is anyone raise your hand if you're tired of your business feeling like a rock is tied to your foot and you're dragging yourself to the bottom of the ocean. But, in a quarter span how many would you say is a good guideline for those watching like, how many goals, objectives should they be going after? Because I think it will be a lot smaller than they think.

Michele Williams: I would say. I like to have if we're talking like really big objectives, not look, there are all kinds of day-to-day goals, you know, that we were trying to get done. But I mean objectives where we're really trying to affect some level of change in the organization. I don't really like more than three. I mean, I could do four if they were on the smaller side. Some could go up to five or six if they're really just small bite-size. But I'm gonna say two to three is enough per quarter.

Courtney: Yeah, I think so too.

Michele Williams: If they really have multiple action steps and multiple action items and multiple people involved. For example, if we were to use one objective of building a new website, I would not throw that in a quarter where I was doing a lot of other really big things. It's too much, there's so much that needs to be done with that. So that would be one objective, and I might put one more with it. Because the thing we need to remember is we've got to do day-to-day work in the middle of these. Strategy is literally trying to do something more or different than just the day-to-day operations. We don't need to set goals to just keep doing the same old thing every day. We're setting goals and strategies so that we can do something different than we have always been doing.

Courtney: Yeah. And then for the business owners out there, because I know we hear this a lot is like I get pushed in all different directions. I show up one day thinking I'm gonna do, you know, these five tasks and then I get hit with five different fires. I know we talk about this a lot with the business strategy. This isn't just your strategy, your task list, you know, what you're working on. This is your framework for decision-making. So what would you say to business owners like that have done this strategy work and then they're getting hit with fires? What could be something that's not correlating for them to kind of alleviate the fires but still stay on the path that they've set for themselves?

Michele Williams: You know what's been interesting is I would say that there are two words that I, over my 25 years of working for myself, there are two words that I see a lot of people run from and I think again, it goes back to education. They run from the word strategy, and they run from the word budget. And they run from those because they think they lock them down. What I would say is they actually free you up. Because what a strategy is and what a budget is are decisions that you're making in advance. So, a strategy is a decision or a set of decisions that you're making in advance that say, think of it as plotting your GPS points. It's saying, when we go on our cross-country trip, this is the route we're going to take, we're going to drive it and this is the route we're taking from the east coast to the west Coast. Right. Here's the timeline, here's where we're going to go, here's how we're going to get there. Well, you may go and follow that route, and it may all go great for a few days, and on day three you may find that there is a road closure and you can't go that way. That's one of those things that comes in. Well, the goal was still to get to the West Coast that didn't shift or change. So now you're looking for the next best way to get there, to work around the roadblocks, to work around where you have to go and how long the road is out, or whatever you have to do to still get to the end result. Well, that's what the strategy does. It's saying this is still where we want to go. Something, a fire is shown up, you know something's happening, this is going on. Look, nobody's standing there saying you're a failure if you don't reach it on December 31st and you reach it on January 2nd. That's not what this is about. These are guidelines. They're not meant to be punitive if we don't hit them. Now, certainly, there may be consequences to not hitting certain goals at certain times. But this is all just meant to give us a set of decisions so that we can act on the day-to-day within that set of decisions. Because if I know that there is a strategic initiative that absolutely 100% bar none needs to be done today, I can look at that in relationship to any fire that's also shown up and make a judgment call. The challenge is when we don't recognize those things, and we don't even know what we're making a priority without having all the information to create a priority order. The same thing happens with the budget. We're making a decision in advance that this is the financial plan that will align with our strategic plan so that when the money comes in, we know where it's going to go. Now, it doesn't mean that another opportunity might not show up for us to spend money. Maybe you blew out the tires on your car or something and you need the van to be able to deliver your work. Something might still happen. We still are going to have to make a judgment call because it wasn't necessarily in the budget. But we can set a framework to ask ourselves questions so that we can then make the decision that would best fit in the framework for where we are.

Courtney: Yeah, that's great. And I think too, like, another angle to look at it is those small little initiatives and wants that our team wants, we want. We can really ask ourselves, okay, does this align with my three objective goals for the quarter? If it doesn't, and maybe it doesn't mean that it's not important, but maybe it gets pushed into the next quarter. So even, like, having an area where you can kind of collect ideas and things that you'd like to do, but to store them, but just reminding yourself. And it's so easy for business owners to, you know, you see all those funny videos, like business owners up at 3:00 am with a new business idea, and we can get caught, I think you called it, you know, shiny object syndrome, where we want to do all the new things, we want to implement new stuff all the time. That takes up time for us to be able to act on the strategy that we have in place. And that's kind of, I think, where business owners get in this rut of feeling like they're never hitting these objectives and goals that they have because they're trying to run in a thousand different paths at one time. So, I think it helps them with burnout, reducing burnout and decision fatigue too. It's like, okay, we want to do this. Here are the objectives we have for the quarter. Oh, yeah, that helps us get to the objective. Let's do that. Or no, you know, that actually aligns more with like, Q2, Q3, three efforts. Let's push that there and we'll bring it back up, you know, in a couple of months. I think that helps a lot with clarity.

Michele Williams: You know, it's interesting. I was just thinking about when you were saying that. When I started my business by myself, one of the things that we have that I would say is good but can also be detrimental to long-term growth is I could be very quick, and very nimble. I could just move at a moment's notice to do what I wanted, slash needed, slash thought I ought to do. I have a new idea. I can act on it on Monday. I got a different idea on Wednesday. I can act on it on Wednesday. Sometimes I'll have people come to me who are idea generators, and they are generating like the way my task list grows overnight, their ideas grow overnight. And one idea spawns the next opportunity and the next. So, they come to me with 14 opportunities, but they don't have the time of 14 people to get it all done. And so, I can remember when I first started hiring and delegating work. I'll tell you where it showed up first for me. That was in marketing.

Courtney: Yeah.

Michele Williams: Because I would meet with my marketing team, we would set what we're going to do for the quarter, and then I would have 14 other ideas. Well, they couldn't just get implemented because they were already down the path of implementing the agreed-upon ideas.

Courtney: Yeah.

Michele Williams: But here's where it created a shift back in me because there was a moment there that I was irritated that we couldn't turn as fast as we could have when I was by myself. But what I realized was it slowed me down enough to make me look at every idea and to weigh idea one against idea two against idea three to go what is the best to help me get known for what I want to get known for and to move I want to go. And so honestly, some of that space and some of that slowing down forced me to build strategy where I didn't have strategy because I couldn't make it without it. And so, I think that's kind of that, that life cycle turn right or that step from sales to profit to order. That moving up, if you will, is understanding that we can't get graspy, squirrely, like all the things, shiny objects, and just move in our business because then we're never known for anything. We never follow anything through to its natural end. We're just not doing all those things properly so we're always trying something different and wondering why we're not getting the outcome. It's because we never stayed the course.

Courtney: Yeah. That's such a good example. Because I feel. I feel like every business owner, too, comes to this place where they were squirrely. They were grinders. They could work, work 60-70 hours a week because they were either new in their business, they were just hungry. They're like, I want the sales. I want to be successful. And then all of a sudden, they get this success, right? They've hit this good, steady pace, but it's like they can't get past this same work, same day to day, year after year. And then all of a sudden, it's like, you have to mature to that next level and change almost the way you think through this decision making, what you're spending your time on. And I think the strategy is like step one to that because it does teach you, it trains you. Because all of a sudden you wake up and you're. You're prioritizing your tasks based on those main objectives that you've set and anything that interferes with those, you're so much more confident to say okay, I'm not going to allow this to take time from me today because it doesn't get me where I need to be. Man, that's such a good example. But one of the questions I want to ask, I know we're coming up on time soon, but, for the business owners that are building this strategy kind of on their own, because I think it can feel lonely sometimes to build these strategies and then all of a sudden, you're the one who's got to execute and you're the one who's got to delegate, and you're the one who's got to decide did we hit it or did we not hit it? Do I have enough tasks? Am I thinking through this? How important is it for business owners to have support and accountability around them in the forms of people, coworkers, and other business owners, and how important is it for accountability when you build your strategy?

Michele Williams: So, I would say 100% accountability. There have been some studies done. I don't have all the numbers with me, but I want to say the last one I remember was you have a 93,3% chance of making it if you write it, if you share it, and if you have somebody help hold you accountable. Ultimately, Courtney, the truth is we are the only ones that can hold ourselves accountable. Because I can call you and ask you, I can follow up with you all day long, but I can't make you do it. I've got a personal trainer and she'll ask are you working out? Are you drinking your water? Are you doing your things? She can ask me all day long, but the only one that makes me do those things is me, right?

Courtney: Yeah.

Michele Williams: But I am 93% more likely to get it done because I know that that's going to happen. I can't tell you how many people, probably every client that I've ever had at some point said, I got all this done because I knew you were going to ask me about it. I knew that you were going to follow up. I mean, why do we do homework in school? Because we know the teacher is going to say, let me see your homework. Did you do your homework? If nobody ever asked for any of it, we probably wouldn't do it unless it was just something that we love to do. But I want to take one little step back on that and say this. If you've never written a strategy before, it can be very intimidating, and I acknowledge that. It can also be written so simply that it doesn't have to be heavy and convoluted. So, I like to look at it in a couple of parts. This is the way that I teach it. I first like to, because I do everything under my Aim with Intent methodology; align your team, ignite your process, and manage your money, and then when we give out our templates and when we give those out, this is kind of the template format that is in. We start with your why, your mission, your vision, and your unique sales proposition. All those things that we all kind of know that are super important, but maybe we haven't fully understood, we have all that documented. So almost everybody listening who's been through those exercises could get the first page or two, you know, they could get the logo page with their title, and they could get the page with all of that. So, they got the first two pages of the strategy you have written. That's important. But then what I like to do is I like to look at the business in the three areas of people, process, and profits. So, who are the people involved? It could be your teammates, it could be your vendors, it could be your clients, it could be anybody. What are the processes that might need help and work to be supportive of where we're going? And then what is the money that is needed to do all the things we need it to do? If you can just write it simply with those three categories and then start limit writing it out and then have somebody help you ask yourself, are you following along? Are you looking at this quarterly? Are you getting things done? How do you know you got it done? How do you know you completed it? And so, one of the things we do in our program is we have a tracker, and we give everybody the tracker. We teach them how to use the tracker, how to put in all of their objectives and key results, and how to list out their KPIs or key performance indicators. It very much is, who's going to do it, when are they going to do it, is it done? Is there a problem? Can we mark it off so that we can move through these things with accountability and do the next piece? But accountability, whether you do it internally, whether you do it with the business bestie, whether you have a coach or an advisor or a mentor, is key to getting things done because we don't want to let other people down. And so, if we could, if we had that perfect relationship with ourselves where we didn't want to let ourselves down, we wouldn't need anybody else. But we weren't made that way.

Courtney: Yeah, no, that's awesome. And I know from the Scarlet Thread perspective how do we serve your clients with the most value and accountability built in? And we kind of started having this discussion, what, around July, maybe June, July. It's, I mean, hello, whoever's listening, we've been talking about some of the things we're putting in place in 2025, we started strategizing and actionizing them back in June and a lot of them are coming and you know, releasing so it's been fun to watch those go through. But back in June and July, we started to ask ourselves that question, how do we take what you do with your top clients, the ones that you're working intimately with in these in-person strategy days, monthly coaching calls, all the things, how do we take that accountability and value and make it more available, and accessible to people in a group environment. So, you're not only getting coaching with you but also, they get to network and meet a ton of other people that are in their shoes. I know we did the Pricing Without Emotion course in the fall and that went awesome. Where we had, I think it was 15 interior designers and window treatment professionals come in for eight weeks. They had the education; they got to hop on coaching calls and ask questions. I know a lot of them are still so excited that they get to access their community so they can ask each other questions back and forth. But tell us a little bit more about how you're taking it, and again for anyone listening,  Michele does this in all levels of her program. She might do it in a little smaller capacity in some, but you're going to get all this value in whatever program that you do. But talk to me a little bit more about how the strategy setting that you do with your in-person strategy days with the ones you're working with very intimately for 12 months, how you're packaging this into our new eight-week program that starts in January, that will be kind of that same group format, eight weeks accountability, you're meeting with Michele. How are you taking that, and packaging it into this eight-week intensive course?

Michele Williams: Yeah, so great question. We have so many pieces of education around it and so we start with a kickoff call where we're going through, setting the stage, doing some coaching and education, and then we have small modules that they will watch in between our times together with templates, workbooks, and downloads. We give you a strategic planning template, we give you an OKR template, we give you KPI templates, and we give you all the pieces and parts that you need to put this in place. And then we have, as you said, we have a community with question and answer. We are also offering additional support and help in there. People are asking questions. The thing I love about this particular style is the people who maybe can't quite afford to do the full-on say I'm going to pay for a full one to one day plus all this additional support, it doesn't mean we can't still have that in our business. And listen, if somebody came in and took the course and said, hey, I want to pay you to go do a whole day with me, we'll go sit down and do the day. But the goal here is to start building up that strategic planning muscle so that they can start to see how it's impacting their business to move them forward so that they can then attain the next level of business ownership that they want to maintain.

Courtney: Yeah, that's awesome. I know we saw quite a few too in the Pricing Without Emotion that it was even their first time with a coaching experience. And it's cool to see people have access to something that's, okay, I'm going to get value. But I also get to kind of dip my toes into what it's like to have a coach with me in my business. Because we see this time and time again. There are a lot of online courses and things like that that lack the accountability piece. You know, we could give all the templates, and we can say, here's your business strategy template, but we really want to be available to ask those kinds of live questions as they're working through those. And then also they get to ask other business owners too, hey, what are you guys doing, are you doing the same thing I'm doing, what are you trying to focus on and grow to? So that's such a cool piece of the program, but I'm super excited to launch that in January with you. I believe January 16th is our start date.

Michele Williams: The other thing that I will say really quickly as we wrap up that is so fun for me is that people that take that course also get invited to our two-day strategic workshop in the fall. And that is an in-person, it's a larger group, but we really help you dig even deeper into it and that is an amazingly transformative two days together. So, to spend time really working on your business like that is it's just an opportunity I don't want people to miss.

Courtney: Yeah, no, it's awesome. And you can sign up for that course. Anyone who's listening on Michele's website, scarletthreadconsulting.com, and then also if you follow her on Instagram, you can find the link in her bio to sign up. So, we'd love to have you. We're doing our waitlist registration and then we'll open up registration here. By the time you guys listen to it, registration might already be open. But if you guys have any questions, you know, feel free to let us know. But before we end, Michele, there's one question I want to ask you for the listeners so they can have like two to three action items that they can quickly leave this podcast with to start working on their strategy. What are two to three steps listeners can take today to start creating and formulating a strategy for 2025?

Michele Williams: I would say if you started anything to get ready, it's really to go back to your why, what it is you're trying to accomplish and what you think you're best at, and the things that you want to do. If you can just start really getting intimately familiar with who you are and what you do and how you want to do it, we can build everything else off of that.

Courtney: Yeah, that's awesome.

Michele Williams: Well, I'm going to encourage everybody to how do I say this, we usually end the podcast with the comment like choose to be profitable because profit doesn't happen by accident. I'm going to say choose to be strategic because strategy leads to profitability and that doesn't happen by accident. Courtney, thank you so much for joining today.

Courtney: Yeah, thanks Michele for having me.

Michele Williams: Have a good day. Bye.

Courtney: You too.

Michele Williams: Profit is a Choice is proud to be part of the designnetwork.org where you can discover more design media reaching creative listeners. Thanks for listening and stay creative and business minded.