How I stopped winging it and started building my business strategically
Plus, come chat with me later this month!
Happy Friday, friends!
Last week, I shared that I wasn’t very intentional when I started my business over seven years ago. For the first year (probably longer, if I’m being honest), I was 100% winging it - figuring things out as I went, with a lot of guesswork and googling. And I’m glad I did it that way, because if I’d decided that I needed to map out a plan first, I don’t think I ever would’ve gotten my business off the ground. I’d have spun on planning, then gotten overwhelmed and ended up stuck.
But the reason my business is still here (and growing) all these years later is because I started to operate more strategically over time. Today, I’m sharing six shifts that helped me stop flying by the seat of my pants and start operating with intention.
Before we dive in, I’d love to invite you to one of my free Q3 Q&A sessions - join me on Thursday, August 21 or Tuesday, August 26 to chat about building your business, from finding clients to beating burnout.
Now, here are six things that helped me start running my business more strategically:
1️⃣ Retainer work
In the early days of building my business, I was almost exclusively doing project work. I had one retainer, but it was very loosely structured in terms of committed hours and contract length. And with one exception, all of the projects I was picking up were relatively small, meaning that I was constantly hustling hard to find my next client.
I made the shift to focus primarily on retainer work (with a set minimum of hours per week and a three-month term) in my first year, and doing so gave me a much more predictable income - with way less stress.
That, in turn, gave me the confidence to make my first meaningful investments in my business - my logo and website design, a custom contract, and someone to help with business development (list-building and outreach).
2️⃣ Mindset
The next big shift was my mindset - I stopped thinking of myself as a freelancer or consultant and started thinking of myself as a business owner. That change empowered me to prioritize working on my business (doing the work to grow it) rather than just in it (client work).
It also helped me feel more confident in my rates, making additional investments in my business, and in things like contract negotiations and dealing with late payments.
3️⃣ Refining my niche & ICP
Around the same time, I got crystal clear on the types of work I wanted to focus on and who I wanted to do it for - read about my winding path here.
With that nailed down, I revamped my LinkedIn profile (here’s how I think about what goes into it) to speak directly to my ideal clients - and magically, they started to find me and reach out. The conversations that followed helped me better understand the challenges they were facing, further shaping my messaging1.
Then with the work that came out of those conversations, I was able to build a portfolio of case studies that were hyper-relevant to my ideal clients. So really, niching had a flywheel effect in my business.
4️⃣ Building a pipeline
With clarity on my ideal clients and the work I wanted to do for them, my next big shift was being more thoughtful about building my pipeline. In the past, I’d thought about business development as being direct response - when I thought about it at all. That meant a high volume of cold outreach to try to get in front of someone who’d be ready to hire me now.
With my new approach, I started to think about business development as a marketing funnel - first, my ideal clients needed to become aware of my business. Then, I needed to build trust with them. That way, I’d be top-of-mind when they were ready to hire.
That said, exactly how you drive awareness, build trust, and convert leads depends on your ideal clients and your own strengths - you want to find the center of the Venn diagram of where your ideal clients hang out and where/how you can show up consistently and with relative ease. If you want to dive deeper on this, my Build Your Pipeline workshop helps you map your own funnel strategy, plus find the low-hanging fruit and use slow periods strategically.
5️⃣ Revenue planning
As I built my marketing funnel, I also got more strategic about revenue planning, considering not just my monthly and annual revenue targets, but also my own capacity.
Getting clear on that helped me revamp my pricing, then create productized offers based on all that I’d learned about my ideal clients’ needs and the problems they were trying to solve.
Then, with my revenue target, capacity, and offers, I was able to map out how many project, retainer, and advisory clients I needed to bring on - and then circle back to my marketing funnel to see how I’d find and land them. (If you’d like to go deeper on this, you can join the wait list for my next revenue planning workshop here.)
I now revisit this planning process every four to six months to ensure I stay on track and adjust as needed.
6️⃣ Investing in coaching
Some of the biggest shifts toward operating more strategically have come from investing in coaching - find more on the coaching investments that were worth it vs. not (and how much they cost) in the paid section of this post.
If I were to go back and do it again, I’d invest earlier and more strategically. My first step would probably be to invest in a coach or mentor who’d navigated the same path that I was on and could help me shortcut through some of the early-stage challenges and confusion. Later, I’d look for coaching in specific areas where I wanted to build up my skillset, such as business development coaching.
(If you’re looking for a mentor who’s been there, done that in the fractional leadership and independent consulting space, you can learn more about my group mentoring program here, or reply to this email to learn more about 1:1 mentoring.)
That’s all we’ve got for today - I hope it was helpful! Have a great weekend and I’ll see you next Friday!
I hadn’t productized my offers yet, but if I had, those conversations would have shaped my offers as well.