“If You Don’t Map It, You’ll Drift” – Why Every Business Needs a Strategic Plan

In this first episode of the Strategy Sessions series, Ashley Carlson and Nichole Hughes introduce the concept of strategic mapping and why it’s essential for sustainable business growth.

They challenge a common misconception: most business owners don’t struggle because they lack ambition—they struggle because they lack a clear, actionable plan. Ashley and Nichole unpack how operating without direction can lead to burnout, constant pivots, and “shiny object syndrome,” ultimately slowing true progress.

The conversation breaks down what strategic mapping actually is, what a strategic plan is not, and how to move from scattered ideas to intentional action. They also share the foundational elements of a strong strategic plan, including vision, priorities, measurable outcomes, ownership, and time alignment.

If you’ve ever felt busy but not truly moving forward, this episode will help you create clarity, reduce overwhelm, and start building a plan that aligns your vision with real execution.

✨ Takeaways

• Most business owners struggle due to a lack of a clear plan—not a lack of ambition.
• Growth without strategy can lead to chaos, burnout, and constant pivots.
• Shiny object syndrome often distracts from real progress.
• Strategic mapping brings clarity, direction, and intentional focus.
• A strategic plan is not just a to-do list or a vision board.
• Strong strategies include clear priorities, ownership, and measurable outcomes.
• Strategy serves as a filter for evaluating new ideas and opportunities.
• Intentional planning helps align time, capacity, and goals.
• Flexibility within a plan allows for continued momentum.
• Clarity reduces stress and multiplies impact.

🧰 The Strategic Mapping Starter Guide (Your free clarity tool) 

Download here:  https://elevatevbs.myflodesk.com/the-delegation-download-podcast-series3  

📲 Connect with Elevate Virtual Business Solutions

Website: elevatevbsolutions.com
Instagram: @elevatevbsolutions
LinkedIn: Elevate Business Solutions
Podcast: The Delegation Download, available wherever you stream podcasts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Delegation Download Podcast, where business owners, CEOs, and leaders learn to work smarter, not harder.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

We're your hosts, Nicole Hughes and Ashley Carlson, here to share real stories, expert tips, and simple strategies to help you delegate with confidence and grow your business with support. Because you can do anything, but not everything.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Welcome to our newest series on the Delegation Download, the strategy sessions, mapping the business you actually want. In this series, we're breaking down how we approach strategic mapping at Elevate, the exact framework we use to move from scattered ideas to aligned action. Because growth doesn't happen by accident. It happens when vision meets structure. Whether you're planning your next quarter or your next five years, this series will help you think bigger, lead better, and execute smarter. So let's map it out.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

That's right. We here at Elevate do strategic mapping every year. It's something that we are very fond of. We've had several clients who have done it, and I know that they have benefited, benefited from it as well. So let's start with something bold today. And that is that most business owners don't struggle because they lack ambition, but they struggle because they're excited about the potential that their business could be and all the things that they can do, but they lack the actual plan that goes into all the potential.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yes, it's actually so common. And I think when whenever I bring something like that up, the amount of times I hear, yes, exactly. So we have really talented people who are running businesses, really capable, but they're really busy. They're just kind of reacting, right? So we all kind of can catch ourselves. And if you think back in the last month, I'm sure most business owners will think, gosh, I really just was jumping in and handling thing to thing to thing, but I really didn't move forward or make true progress on something that will scale my business or achieve the next goal because we tend to get, you know, so bogged down and lacking the forward momentum on the things that truly matter.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Yeah, and like you were saying, it's that forward momentum, right? And so we don't have that direction of where we want to go. We know what the idea is, but we don't have the direction. And then when you end up drifting, and drifting can feel like very many different things. So it can feel like constant pivots where you're having to change direction constantly. It could be shiny object syndrome, which all of us have gotten you have this great idea, but you don't have it mapped out. You don't have the milestones set. It could be team confusion. Who's owning this project? Who is in charge of this? Who's leading it? Who is doing the implementation? It could lead to burnout. And then it can also lead to saying yes to too many things that aren't actually moving anything forward. You're just sitting there stagnant.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Right. And I think, gosh, I could talk on all of those from personal experience for sure. But shiny object syndrome, I think, is really common, especially right now with all this tech. I think that there are so many platforms out there that promise to solve all these problems. And so a lot of people will spend time and energy to try to shift over to this new platform when in reality, I think you first have to figure out what the problem is and what the true solve is. Because from experience and from things that I have heard people go through is definitely spending too much time, energy, resources in general, shifting over to a platform that doesn't actually solve the problem. It's like putting a like a band-aid over a big wound, right? Like we got to figure out the the cause first, the true cause before any any system could actually ever solve it. So I think the the hard truth is that growth without strategy is really just it can lead to chaos. It, you know, uh I think if you're just heading in any direction on a whim or without a true plan or purpose, you might be heading in the wrong direction or heading in too many directions, right? Like if you imagine the fork in the road and you're trying to go on all of them with that type of thing. So I think it really could create chaos without a plan. Yeah, no, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

And then for we've also heard this is business owners are strategic in their business. Every decision that they make in their business is a strategic choice to make their business move forward. So for those that are saying, like, I don't need strategic mapping, I am very strategic in my business. I don't need something that says, I'm going to go from A to Z, and these are all the steps in between. I'm here to tell you that you probably do. And I would love for you to define, Ashley, what is strategic mapping for those that, like I said, are already being strategic in their business? What does strategic mapping do for the business owner, for the team, for the business as a whole?

SPEAKER_01 4:24

All right. So strategic mapping is truthfully, it's honestly hard for me to describe because it's so much clarity comes from it even within the first sessions. We go through a few sessions where I dive really deep into first the foundations of your business. So first we we build the mission, vision, and core values. So your business statements, what are you on a mission to do in your business? What change are you looking to make? What impact are you looking to make? What's the vision? If we were to dream big and in five to 10 years, what does success look like to you? What have you impacted? What does it look like for you? Also, we all start businesses to change our own personal lives often, right? We leave corporate for a certain reason. So there's there is a vision of the impact you want to make on a broader scale, but also for yourself. So this North Star, right? And then your core values, that really are those are those are really guiding principles of who do I want on this train with me in this mission and this this direction that I'm heading, who do I want along the ride? And that is your team, also your customer base. So really, who are the people that I want to come alongside me? And so those three statements, as minimal as it sounds, a lot of people are like, I don't need those. I'm just, I have this idea and I'm gonna go forward. They really are your guardrails against getting too distracted or shiny object syndrome, whether it's a technology or just a new idea and not preventing you from making small progress on a hundred things. And it will make sure that you're making progress on truly what you said you were setting out to do. Um, that's where we start. That's the foundation. And from there, we go through the seven pillars of your business, which is ranging from anything from your systems and processes, which is huge because what you do and how you do it is really important for any business owner who needs to scale. You need to know how to do it. And we also look at your finances. How are you tracking and organizing your finances? What about team? Do you have job descriptions? If not, let's create them. We talked about this in other episodes before, why that's so important. So we really go through the nitty-gritty visibility. How are you currently showing up? How are people hearing about you? And how do you want people to start hearing about you? Let's brainstorm new ideas. So we go through all of that, a lot of idea collecting, a lot of data collecting. And then I actually take it and create a really massive to-do list. Uh, so I always say, you know, a lot of people can relate to sticky notes everywhere, ideas jotted down in your phone, or sending emails to yourself, whatever your system is. There's ideas everywhere. And so what this process does is it takes all those ideas floating around everywhere, puts them all in a place, in one single place, and then on another session, we together will actually start putting out when should those ideas start happening? Are they gonna happen in the next couple of quarters or are they just gonna go in the parking lot for when it might be appropriate? But I promise it's written down there, you won't forget it. And now you can move on and focus on the other things that we said were priorities. And then the big thing that I do also is go through those to-dos. Let's say we come up with what's gonna happen in the next quarter. Okay, now let's talk about how that's gonna happen. Let's talk about who's gonna help you and what that success looks like to because truthfully, a lot of these lists, I've never seen a list that can be accomplished by one person. I've always seen this list. If it's gonna get accomplished, you need to bring people alongside you. So delegation is a big key in uh moving forward from that strategic map.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Yeah, absolutely. And I we're gonna go into it more in future episodes for this series in regards to like how you figure that out and the tips to really get clear on what you want those goals, projects, tasks to be and where they should go. So stay tuned because we will give you all that information. But I want to talk about what a strategic plan is not, because I think a lot of times, like you were saying, you can send yourself emails, you can put notes in your phone, you can have all these sticky notes, but that is not a strategic map. That is not a strategic plan. That is just not what it needs to be in order to move the needle forward. So let's let's look at some other things that are not a strategic plan, a Pinterest board, a vision board. That's great that that is what you want it to be someday, but you have to map out the steps to get there. It is not a fluffy annual goal list of what you want to accomplish at the end of the year. And it's also not a 47, 50 page document that you're never gonna open again. You want it to be something that can be completed. And so that is something that is very important is to not think of it as a to-do list because it's not just a to-do list, it is a plan.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Yeah, it's I think the long documents of things they're they're definitely needed in certain areas of a business for certain reasons, like outside investors and things like that. But let's be honest, nobody besides those investors want to really look at it. And you really want something more tangible, more flexible too. And, you know, we break it out, we can make it color-coded, we can use emojis, whatever it is that works for the business owner that makes them want to keep going back and see their progress. It's so great to see the progress forward and almost like that progress bar, right? And I think that when you said vision board, it made me smile because I think that vision boards are super cool. We've done them together as a team here at Elevate and I think they're fun and we put them on our, you know, our backgrounds on our computer to keep us inspired and all of that. But like you said, it's it's an inspiration, but and it's a a reason to keep going, but it's not necessarily the how to get there. So that's why I think the plan is so important. When I look at strategy, I think of it as it's a filter that helps you answer this. I mean, you've heard me do like I come up with all kinds of ideas, as do you. And then we have to, we are much better now at being like, does this align with what we said that are our priorities for this quarter or this year? That's because we and we are able to, because we have jumped forward on something we probably shouldn't have. It was too soon, or we stretch ourselves too thin. So, but because we've had this strategy and we're getting we are use it as our North Star, as our guardrails, we can use it as a filter to say, I agree, I love this idea, but we got it. This is what we said our priorities were this quarter. So let's save it for next quarter. We can ask, is this the right time? Is this the right season? Should we wait on this? Do we have the capacity? That is a huge question. We are chronic overcommitters here because we are so excited about what we do here. But this strategy helps us realize no, we actually can't do that right now. So if the answer is yes, something else has to move. And it's because we have this map of what we're committed to right now that we can even ask that question or answer that question. And then also who owns this? So the strategy, the part of the strategic map, like like I said, is we decide who owns what. We have the really clear buckets, or maybe it's also just someone's really excited about it. They're the ones who brought that idea forward. So all of those things are pieces of strategy that help you filter your amazing ideas and the excitement that you're feeling to make sure that the time and resources that you're investing in all those ideas are purposeful and you're not gonna get burnt out and you're not gonna feel like you've started but not finished a thousand things, things like that. So I think that those are all the reasons why strategy is so important.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Yeah, 100%. And I think something that you you mentioned about not like having clear priorities for that quarter. Real life example, as we speak, I have my priorities for this quarter. And one of them right now is paused. We just haven't moved forward on it. And so instead of sitting there and being like, I can't move forward on this, I looked at my list in my parking lot and I said, you know what, I can move forward with this and I can get this done. So that's also what the strategic map and your strategic plan does is it says, okay, if you're able to finish these or you get stuck somewhere, you can move on to something else in your list that you have already established that needs to be done and make forward momentum there. It doesn't mean that it has to be done in this quarter. That's not what a strategic plan is. It is a guide to get you to the end. And so it's okay to move forward on something or to pause something because it's just not aligned in that quarter you thought it was going to be, but you have all of your things planned out so you can grab from your parking lot and move forward with something else and still have momentum going. That's one of the cool things about strategic mapping. Um, and also real strategic plans and real strategic maps have five things. A clear vision, like you were saying. What are you going to do? What is the end goal? And we talk about this in delegation a lot. It's not the it's not the how, it's the what. What do you want to do? What is your end goal? It's also defining priorities. What matters most? Like you said, we have all these grand ideas, we want to get all of these things done. We just don't have the bandwidth. So, what is the priority for right now? And what can you get done right now in a realistic time frame? Measurable outcomes. How do we know it's working? So we've talked about it before. KPIs, you want to be looking at metrics, you want to be looking at the progress bar and seeing like how far have we gotten on this in the past three months? Ownership. Who's owning this? Like you were saying. Is it somebody who's really excited about the project or the task that's at hand? Is it a whole team of people? But who's leading it? Who is the person that's saying, this is mine? I'm going to take responsibility for this. I'm still gonna delegate out and have implementers on the project, but this is mine. And then also time alignment. When is it going to happen? Does it need to happen in Q1? Does it need to happen in Q2? Is it around a launch that you're doing? Is it around a rebrand? Is it around a trip that you have planned? And as a business owner, you have to look at all of that when you're doing your strategic plan. Because if you're going to be out of the office the whole month of June because you're going to be on vacation, it's probably not a great idea to set up a ton of things in Q3 because you want to get them all, or Q2 because you want to get them all done then when you're not going to be around to give input or review or anything like that. So having that time as far as when it's going to happen is extremely important when you're mapping things out.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Yeah, absolutely. I think that the key here is just that clear ownership, timeline, purpose, all those things without any of that, you just have a basket full of ideas and the ideas itself are not going to scale businesses, right? So really making sure that the who, the when, and the how is really clear on all those ideas, and that will help you scale.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Yeah, absolutely. And I know when you've done for some insight, when we do strategic mapping here at Elevate, it is not a one-day thing. It is a multiple, it's a long process. It's a longer process, not super long, but it's a longer process. There's several meetings involved. There is pre-work, there's homework, there's a lot of things that go into it. So for business owners who are thinking about doing strategic mapping or they want to make their plan, how would they set themselves up for success before they actually start the planning process?

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Yeah. So I'm going to speak, well, I guess just to be clear. So strategic planning that we do at Elevate is different than what I lead for clients, uh, the actual strategic mapping offer that I will lead them through. It definitely is a lot more, it is meant to be where I lead them through the process. And it should be hopefully as painless as possible for them, and not requiring a whole bunch from them and really just allowing me to do the heavy lifting, if you will. But speaking in general, from the strategy seat is blocking intentional time. And I will say I am fully guilty of not doing that because we have been a baby business and we have been scaling quickly. And that required a lot of time and energy on my part. And so I completely understand that blocking time to work on your own strategy is very hard to do, which is another reason why I think doing strategic mapping with me is great. Like it's on the calendar, it's dedicated time and all of that. And so that is one definitely one benefit is you are dedicating that time, no questions asked. But that intentional time of not being interrupted by, you know, your email notifications, Slack notifications, whatever it might be, the oh, I forgot I have to do this one thing really quick, really truly uninterrupted time. And I think the big thing is data. So really making sure that you are collecting data along the way. If you haven't yet done that, I highly suggest you start and making sure that you're collecting some sort of data and metrics about your revenue trends, your client trends, your visibility trends, like how is marketing working for you? Your team, how are how's things going with your team? Things like that. So processes that might be broken, all of those kinds of data, you really need to make sure you're collecting and having that before you start dreaming up your strategy. So the I think the whole strategy process is it really is ever evergreen. It's it's never gonna be done. You're never gonna be done with your strategy. We, like you said, we do strategic planning every year, but we actually re-review our strategy every month and every quarter as well. So I think that that's also part of the flexibility piece and just knowing that as much as we said we were gonna do and dream up all these things for the year, there's also just new things that come up, whether it's new ideas that have to deprioritize something else because it is more aligned, or it could just be that life happens, you know, who knows? Capacity changes, things take longer than we expected. Who knows what? And so I think the the flexibility is definitely a big piece. But it is also like you said, we can be flexible because we had the plan.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Yeah. And I think that for us here at Elevate, we are a we have a smaller leadership team. Obviously, there are some solopreneurs that are out there that do not have a large team or they may not even have a right hand to help them with the implementation. But I think one thing to include and to start thinking about when you go into some type of strategic planning is to include your leadership voices because they may have insight or they're seeing things through a different lens than you are as the business owner. And it's great to have that insight. So I think bringing your leadership team members or just person in to help with any type of strategic plan is just it's so beneficial because they're gonna point out things, just like we talked about with delegation. They're gonna point out things that maybe you you didn't even see. And you're gonna say, oh my gosh, you're right. We need to, we need to add that into the plan. We need to work on that at some point. So let's make sure that that is there. And I also think that clarifying what your capacity is. You can't build a year-long plan on a 12-month or on a six-month term. It can't be done. So if something needs to be done within six months, then it's got to be at the beginning of the whenever you started. Let's say you're doing January to December. If you've got a six-month plan, it has to be in the first six months, six months of the year. You can't have that be part of the 12-month plan at the end of the year when you need it to be done in the beginning. So, really making sure that when you're mapping things out, look at what your capacity is. Like I was saying, if you're gonna be on vacation for the entire month of June, don't push something to June when you know it's not gonna get done. Make sure it's sitting somewhere else in the year. So I think that those are all extremely important things to start looking at before you start your planning process and really be intentional, like you were saying, about the time that you're spending to start the planning.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Yeah, absolutely. I think that uh the intentionality of planning is so important and just will allow for, and like I said, the the vacation example that you gave, if you if summer is a heavy travel month for you with your family and whatever that looks like, or the holidays even, that sometimes that doesn't come up when you're doing the annual plan because you're just thinking more of the, you know, load each month or each quarter. But that's also why the monthly planning and checking in is so important. Cause then you can look and be like, oh, actually, I said I was gonna do this in Q2, but that's just not realistic because of XYZ. Now that I'm looking at it maybe more closely versus so far out. So that's why strategy, the job is really never done. But the foundation that you want to build from is that original plan. I guess the question that we want you all to be thinking about going forward is if every decision in your business ran through a clear strategic filter, what would change?

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Absolutely, because clarity reduces stress and the alignment will then multiply your impact, right? If you're aligned, you're gonna make more progress on things. You're gonna make a bigger impact in your business for your clients, for your team. So make sure to have that clarity. Well, that's it for today's episode. So thank you for joining us on this episode of the strategy sessions, mapping the business you actually want. If this conversation sparked something for you, created a strategic mapping starter guide that will help you take the first steps. It's not a full business plan template, but it is a clarity tool, a way to pause, zoom out, and think strategically before you make your next move. You can download it using the link in the show notes. And if you're ready to go deeper to build a fully aligned strategic map with real structure, ownership, and execution, make sure to book a clarity call to chat with us. And remember, you've got this. Thanks for listening to the Delegation Download Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and follow us at Elevate VB Solutions for more tips to help you lead smarter and live better.