Ever plan an amazing business move but hit a roadblock? This episode tackles the "pothole" of poor planning for solopreneurs. Learn how to "right-size" your strategy based on your resources and set yourself up for sustainable success. Listen now!
Good Business is hosted by Illana Burk, CEO of Your Life's Workshop llc and strategic coach to entrepreneurs, creative leaders, and industry disruptors the world over.
Ever plan an amazing business move but hit a roadblock? This episode tackles the "pothole" of poor planning for solopreneurs. Learn how to "right-size" your strategy based on your resources and set yourself up for sustainable success. Listen now!
Good Business is hosted by Illana Burk, CEO of Your Life's Workshop llc and strategic coach to entrepreneurs, creative leaders, and industry disruptors the world over.
All right, welcome back to the Good Business Podcast. I'm your host, Illana Burk, and today we are talking about the most significant pothole in failing to implement solid plans. But today, instead of talking through my standard problem, action, solution, wrap up, cadence, I'm going to tell a little story before we get to the actual pothole that's the punchline at the end. So bear with me here. I think you'll enjoy it. It's not too long, I promise. So I have done a lot of planning in my line of work. I mean, I'm a strategist, so it kind of comes with the territory. It's pretty much my whole thing, right? And before clients work with me, most of their strategic planning sessions go something like this. I need something new. Or I have a problem. I'm going to brainstorm about it. And then idea, idea, idea. Posturing, posturing, posturing. Flurry of post it notes and whiteboard scribbling and lots of journaling and lots of discussions and lots of words like integration and engagement and proactive. It's all very exciting. Right? Super fun. Brainstorming. Lots of circles. Lots of lines. Lots of arrows. Right? And they feel much better because they are doing something. They're taking action. They are using their big brains to do things, right? But they're not actually doing things yet. They're planning to do things. And at the very end, if it's well done, they have something that looks like a way forward, right? A solution to whatever the problem was. It's like a, they're looking at it like it's a guiding compass that will lead them from the dark. And they leave feeling very pleased with themselves because now they have a plan, right? We've all been there. At this stage, if they were a company and not like a struggling health coach or life coach or designer or copywriter or whatever your thing is, right? That makes you a tiny little solo business owner. If you had an actual company behind you, this would be the stage where it would be up to all the worker bees to figure out how to implement said plan. But if you're a solo act. Guess what? You are all the worker bees. There are no other bees. Just you. There's just you. So you start chipping away at it and you quickly realize that you don't actually have enough resources. You really need more bees. Right? You need maybe a VA. Nope. No money for a VA. A coach? No money for a coach either. A course. Yes, I will take a course. Oh no wait, I don't have time for a course. What was that plan again? Oh right, get strategic about whatever, whatever, whatever, right? Shit, now I need a plan, right? You see how that all goes in one big old circle? That was the pothole. Did you see it back there? They drove right over it. The thing that will kill a good plan faster than just about anything else is the failure to consider capacity and resources before you start planning. Knowing how much gas you have in the tank before you start allows you to plan your journey based on the locations of gas stations along the way, right? And I won't lie, like considering capacity before you consider solutions is like not fun at all. It's Western culture does not prepare us well for conceptualizing constraint as part of brainstorming. And there is a lot to be said for plowing ahead at times without considering what's possible. Right? Like, we probably never would have landed on the moon if we considered what was possible. But a lot of times those big swings are like, they actually have the capacity to figure it out. Right? We can go, Hey, that's not possible. I have no idea how to, how we're going to do that. But billions and billions and billions of dollars are available to figure it out. When you don't actually have that, the capacity of resources that way, that's what we're talking about. So, we're not talking about flying to the moon. We're talking about the problems solving and strategizing next steps in your work. Understanding simple things like how much time you actually have, how much brain power you can really devote to what you're doing, what are the needs of your family, your friends, your stakeholders, what are they actually needing so that you can right size the solutions and save yourself from the massive soul crushing pothole of constantly failing to consider what you can do with what you actually have. Right. How do you deal with that? It's a slow process. It's an uncomfortable process. And it's one that like, we often like to skip over as solo business owners, because it doesn't feel nice to confront the realities of your situation sometimes. And, But the nice thing about knowing what they are is that you can choose what to push through, you can choose where to sacrifice, and you can make decisions with your eyes open. If you're not making decisions with your eyes open and you're just creating strategy and hoping that the road will consistently rise to meet you means that you're very likely not paying attention to what people around you actually need and expecting, the road isn't a road, it's people. You know, it's your spouse, it's your friends, it's the human resources around you that are willing to help you. It's not a road rising up to meet you, it's actual human power being willing to throw in and help when you're not really planning well for how you're creating your work in the world. You have to stop and think about that and do the hard work before you start coming up with solutions of recognizing like, okay, I want to do more social media. I probably realistically only have about two more hours a week. So what I have to create my strategy based on that constraint. I can't create a massive, amazing, transcendent strategy that requires 10 hours a week because you just can't put that much gas in that tank, right? There's just not enough room and you're setting yourself up for disappointment and for making excuses for your own failures, right? And that sucks. That creates martyrdom or it creates hustle. And both of those things suck, right? So recognize what your resources are and get okay with growing as fast as you can. As fast as you can, not as fast as you want to. Because reality is kind of a bitch. Eventually it is really just a big hole in the street that you fall in and you can't go any further. But man, if you have the resources, by all means, go to the moon. If you can go to the moon, go to the moon, right? But you got to know what your resources are. Before you can actually start building your rocket ship. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me today. It was just a nice, tight little lesson, but it's an important one. I look forward to seeing you very soon on our next episode. Have a great one, y'all. Bye.