Life Unsettled

Life Unsettled


100 – Business Strategy Comprehensive View

July 18, 2017

Business strategy is often overlooked in small businesses. Too often a small business while a way to pick up some extra money or to gain financial freedom, neglects a comprehensive business strategy.

There are over 40 million people in the United States with side gigs. Now, these don’t even include people that have separated from there job and set up their own business. I wonder how many of those 40 million would be able to have a complete business if they looked a more closely at strategy. There are an additional 500,000 people per month starting new businesses.

This episode is meant to touch on the eight points that everyone, regardless of the size of their business, should be familiar.

The detail and motivation of each is contained in the audio of the episode. However, here is a brief overview of what they mean. Listen to the episode to understand why it’s important to anyone and any business. The eight categories are:

1. Product line - this not only includes what you’re selling now, but what you might want to sell in the future.

2. Targeting your market – while current trends and recommendations say concentrate on one person as you target your product or service, you may have to at least be aware of more segments.

3. Marketing - while much has changed because of technology today, much has also stayed the same.

4. Sales - there are diverse sales methods today because of online skills and techniques. However, each of these tend to attract different types of people and must be used differently.

5. Distribution – whether you have a product or service, distribution channels have expanded and your market potential depends on your distribution method and size of your channel.

6. Production - how is your product or service created? With today’s technology, however it is done, will probably be changed within the next couple of years

7. Labor - this is not only about the people you have, but how efficiently and how well skilled they are. It concerns the training. If you are one man shop with a limited time, then you need better time management, no matter how good you think you are.

8. Finance - probably the most important was saved for last. I’ve been told by my former accountant and read that 70% a business failures are caused by financial mismanagement. So, while it may be boring for some, this is a crucial area for any business.

There are a wealth of opportunities to start businesses today. However, you not only want to own a business you want to increase the probability of a successful entrepreneurial venture with sound ongoing business strategy.

Now, as I said this episode is to help understand the motivation and the reasoning why each of these is important to everyone in business. Over the next several episodes, each of these Will be gone into greater depth.

This episode was motivated by several questions I received and the observation of so many failures for lack of understanding of business strategy and for ignoring one or more of these areas.

You certainly don't have to be an expert in all these business strategy fields. That would be ludicrous as you would never get to do your business. But, you must understand an overview and be able to evaluate what kinds of advice you are getting and from whom.