Positioned with Kimberly Knight

56: Strategic Planning Like Multi Million Dollar Corporations - Part 1

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Strategic Planning Like Multimillion-Dollar Corporations (Part 1)

As Christian entrepreneurs, we have incredible kingdom advantages, but we often approach business planning like we're running hobbies instead of enterprises. In this first part of our strategic planning series, we're exploring how corporations with multimillion-dollar budgets plan their success - and how you can apply these same principles to your kingdom business.

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Essential Episodes to Listen to Before Part 2:



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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Position Podcast. I am your host, kimberly Knight, and I want to ask you a question how are you planning for your business for the remainder of the year? You know, if your answer involves that you're just trusting God and you have no strategic action to it, we need to talk, because faith without works is dead, and that includes our strategic planning for your kingdom business. So today I'm going to start a two-part series on strategic planning for Christian entrepreneurs, and I am going to show you that the way that we have approached planning may not be giving us the outcomes that we expect or that we want. So let's take a look at Proverbs 20. It says that the plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty. So God expects us to be good stewards, and in being good stewards, we should plan strategically. Now, this isn't about lacking faith. This is really about stewarding well and in excellence what God has called us to do. Remember, my friends, that we are not just building businesses. No, we are building kingdom enterprises, and that requires strategic thinking and excellent stewardship. So for a moment, I want to dig into how my clients, which are corporations, nonprofits and government agencies, how they plan versus how most small business owners plan, and I think you're going to see why, as this unfolds, that we're not getting the outcomes that we would like to see like to see. So one of the things that multi-million dollar entities do when approaching strategic plan that a lot of Christian entrepreneurs do not is that corporations plan with data and systems Data and predetermined systems, so it's not fly by the seat of your pants or build it as you fly. They don't plan with emotion or according to circumstances. So just look at it this way If you really want to make money with your business, if you really want a deeper impact with your business, then we need to shift to making strategic decisions and not emotional ones, and that means learning to operate from predetermined priorities and not feelings or circumstances. That said, most corporations know their numbers and plan around concrete data and not how they feel that day. So I want to encourage us to not just get confused with. Some of us say we're air quotes, trusting God, but we're really just unprepared and calling it faith, and at best that is assumption disguised as trying to be deep. At worst it's just a hot mess. But it's time to start treating our businesses like businesses and not just hobbies. Understanding that our kingdom enterprise is part of our calling and we call to steward that well and with the excellence that God deserves is part of our calling, and we call to steward that well and with the excellence that God deserves. Also, keeping in mind that strategic planning is going to help you shift how you approach planning and decision-making right.

Speaker 1:

Corporations invest in their training and growth before they need it. They invest in training at the level they expect to reach, not where they currently are. One of the things that you will note with corporations is that in-service training is very important and they invest at the level that they intend to reach. It is one of the things that I have now incorporated into my business and I am seeing myself move ahead by leaps and bounds once I started doing that. I cover that more in the episode that shares how I made more money in a year than I ever had before, to leave in the show notes a link to that episode. You should go back and listen to that one because there's a lot of good stuff in there.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now, in addition to investing in training at the level they want to attain, corporations also have contingency plans mapped out before they need them. Now, what's a contingency plan? They have plan A, plan B, plan C, sometimes plan G, h, I. We may not need that many contingency plans, because for most of us we're not doing things that are that complex that we would need that many. But we do need to make sure that we are not moving by circumstances and shifting according to circumstances. We don't want to make things up as we go.

Speaker 1:

Stuff is going to happen, right? The Bible says that it rains on the just and the unjust, so let's have some umbrellas. That's not a lack of faith to have a contingency plan. It's not a lack of faith to say, well, if X, Y, z doesn't go the way I want it to, I'll move in this direction. I consider that a good level of stewardship. That's just another level of really good stewardship. Here's the thing. The difference with us is that we can also include in that any prophetic utterance we get, any type of spiritual guidance that we receive, because I am telling you, stuff is going to happen. That is just the nature of life. Life is life, but God is still God and he will help us to plan accordingly, all right. So contingency plans are a friend.

Speaker 1:

Another thing that corporations do is that they plan in quarters and years. We are right now in, as of this, recording quarter three. Quarter three and quarter four are already planned for the corporations that I deal with. They were planned back in January and we just tweak as we need to or insert our contingency plans as we need to. They are not flying by the seat of their pants, just doing one thing this week and another thing next week and not having any direction. This is not about a to-do list. This is about having real growth and understanding that real growth is going to take strategic, long-term planning.

Speaker 1:

I'm thinking about an entity that I'm working with, a nonprofit, and I've been working with them for almost a year. It took six months for this multimillion dollar, almost 200 employee institution to complete their strategic plan process. Why? Well, they're pretty complex, they're very large, they have a lot of moving parts, they have multiple funding sources, multiple streams of income, and I'm not talking about just two or three. They have about 20 streams of income. So it was a lot of planning, a lot of moving pieces, a lot of people that we had to plan around.

Speaker 1:

For most of you listening to this, you might not have that level of staffing, so it may not take you nearly as long, but the point here I want you to understand is just doing a weekly to-do list is not a plan. It is not a plan. This organization that I'm talking about and most of the organizations I work with we have a five-year plan with contingencies, and those contingencies take into account changing markets, political climates and the like. I'm encouraging you to do the same. I'm also going to tell you that, for a lot of us and I'm just going to give you this as a word, do with it what you will For a lot of us, we think too small and too short term for the calling that God has placed on our lives.

Speaker 1:

Some of us are called to do very big things, and until we learn to stretch and think longer term and to cooperate with the vision, we're not going to see it come to pass. This is not magic. This is going to take effort. Faith without works is dead. So, that said, you know we have a kingdom advantage, right, and there's no way I was going to close this episode without talking about our kingdom advantage. As entrepreneurs, we have an advantage that secular businesses just don't have, my friends, they just don't have it. We serve a God who knows the end from the beginning. Nothing takes Him by surprise Absolutely nothing and we have access to the same divine wisdom that the world does not. So, as we seek God's guidance in our strategic planning, we can actually build for eternal impact and not just profit.

Speaker 1:

Any business entity that you have right now is actually God's calling you to solve a problem or meet a need for someone else, and in turn, they give you revenue. So you're called to meet the need and you meet the need for that person, and in exchange, that person meets your need. You meet the need for that person and, in exchange, that person meets your need, which is revenue. Right, it's a great exchange, and so but, but, but. But. But hear me out. Our businesses aren't just about making money. They're also about kingdom advancement. So God is right in the midst of that.

Speaker 1:

We have a higher purpose that drives our planning. We have a higher purpose that drives our decision-making and even our revenue. And how we utilize that, and remembering that our businesses are the answers to someone else's prayers and petitions, really will give us a strategic advantage and access to information, wisdom, knowledge and understanding that we normally wouldn't have. We also have supernatural provision that is available to us. So I don't want you to limit yourself to just the natural resources. I mean we incorporate faith in our planning, but we also make sure that we are practical about its execution. We can plan like corporations, but we can also have Holy Spirit's agenda, and that means that money is not our only goal, but strategic planning is going to lead to greater kingdom impact and money and revenue. And having these advantages doesn't mean that we sit back and do nothing. It means that we plan strategically and seek God's guidance in that planning and in the execution of saying it's one thing to plan, it's another thing to execute. We'll talk about that in another episode, but we also have to make sure.

Speaker 1:

So in my next episode I am going to walk you through some of the framework, some of the process that I actually use with these larger organizations, so that you can begin to get an idea of how to plan for your business. I'm going to break down those processes and also look at how you can transform and succeed in the next quarter and beyond. I also want to encourage you, as I mentioned before, to go back and listen to the episode titled how I Made More Money Than Ever Before, as well as the episode on Priority Protocol. I'm going to encourage you to listen to both of those before you listen to part two of this podcast, because I am going to do a part two, and those two that I just mentioned are going to give you some of the tactical, practical strategies that you're going to need. So I'll leave the links for those in the show notes and also prepare your heart and mind in prayer for part two so that you can begin to catch some of those nuggets and incorporate them into your business success.

Speaker 1:

All right, dear ones, I really want you to remember that strategic planning does not mean, under any circumstances, that you're lacking faith. It is actually excellent stewardship, and excellent stewardship requires excellent planning. Remember that we serve a God who has limitless access to wisdom, resources and knowledge, that the family does that, the family that the world does not have All right family. If this episode blessed you, please share it with another kingdom entrepreneur who needs to hear this message and leave me a review on iTunes. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. I'll leave those links in the show notes as well, and we also are using some hashtags, which I'm going to put in the show notes so that you can make sure that we see you out there right Until next time. Be wonderfully blessed and stay positioned Bye now.

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Kimberly Knight

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