One of my clients is a business coach, and her world is loud. Her program clients, industry peers, and prospective leads are all active online, which means her feed is a steady stream of new offers, new trainings, new software, and someone’s latest method for scaling.
When a new strategy arrives every hour, it’s natural to measure your business against whatever everyone is talking about this week. That comparison weighs more at certain moments. Revenue has plateaued. You’re burnt out, with no room to try something new even if you wanted to. You’re wearing every hat and being pulled in every direction, and some days you’d rather burn it all down. Or you simply aren’t where you thought you’d be by now. In those moments, every new business strategy starts to look like the answer.
This year, my client was in several of those moments at once, with a lot happening in her personal life on top of it. So she did what many founders do. She started bringing me ideas, one after another.
Weeding out the noise.
We went through every one of them together, and I measured each against three questions. Would it give her more capacity? Would it improve the client experience in a way that supports retention and program growth? Would it help the business run more efficiently as her team grows?
The ideas that passed, we implemented. The rest, we scrapped or put on hold.
Many of those were good ideas in the abstract. They would have made the business look more polished from the outside. They also would have created more work and more oversight for a founder who had none to spare.
The goal is to increase her capacity, not just make things look better on the outside.
Prettier isn’t the same as better.
She is in a full season of life while still building toward her biggest goals, as she should be. A business at that stage doesn’t need every tool, system, and trend. It needs the ones that fit where it’s operating today, that can be managed well right now, and that will gradually streamline several parts of the business at once, freeing up time and improving the return on what she invests.
How to choose the right business strategy as a founder.
Before you add the next strategy, ask yourself a few honest questions.
Will this create capacity, or ask for capacity I don’t have?
Does it improve the experience for the clients I already serve?
Will it still work as my team grows?
Can it run well without me overseeing every step?
Someone to tell you what to skip.
Part of my role is pointing out what doesn’t fit, even when it’s the exciting idea everyone else is talking about. Sometimes the most valuable thing I bring to a meeting is a reason to wait.
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If you’re surrounded by strategies and short on capacity, the Business Performance Intensive is where I’d start. It ends in a roadmap session that sets out what to execute next, followed by two weeks of email or Telegram support so questions never sit and wait.
Or begin with a clarity call, and we’ll talk through what’s on your list.
Warmly,
