My coach, Chris, says I should include more about what interests me in my blogs and emails. When it comes to strategic marketing, or any marketing for that matter, I trust Chris above anyone else on the planet.
He taught me his engineered approach to marketing. When we first met, I’d been messing around with the marketing in my business since I founded the company several years earlier. I had attended many of the ‘guru’ programs and invested a lot of time, money, and effort for little return.
Chris taught me his three systems approach—a well-thought-out strategic methodology for systemizing results-based marketing for any business. The subsequent results for my clients and my own business speak for themselves.
The point about more personable pieces is that your audience gets to know you. Remember that old adage, “When people know you, like you, and trust you, they will buy from you.”
If you are purely technical, people will become bored. It’s ok to be technical, but be personable. Be you.
My wife, Clare, and I are off to Venice for four days next week. It’s the second time we’ve been in two years. We love it! On our first visit, we fell in love with the city and wanted to come back. On our first trip, we saw many of the typical ‘must-see’ sights, as well as walked around and just took it all in.
We saw the Doge’s Palace, St. Mark’s Basilica, Rialto Bridge, Scualo San Rocco, and San Giorgio Maggiore, had a gondola ride on the Grand Canal, and tried some recommended restaurants. We also travelled to the island of Lido because, by chance, the Venice Film Festival was being held, so we decided to do some celebrity spotting.
This time, we just want to stroll around, go into whatever church or museum takes our fancy, wander down interesting-looking calles, sit in the sun, and take the city as we find it—a strategy, not a plan.
I was thinking about this in relation to a recent conversation with a client.
We were discussing his business’s strategic plan, and he said he couldn’t create a vision or a big long-term goal until he had a realistic plan.
The typical planning process I see when I come into a business is often a budget-driven or bottom-up goal-setting process.
The problem with creating a plan before the big goal is that it can stifle the art of the possible. As Bill Gates is credited with saying, “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”
I know it might seem counterintuitive—especially in the fast-paced world we live in—to set really long-term goals. But if you want some top-line revenue growth, then I’m here to tell you that you need to nail down your strategy and set a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal.
A Big Hairy Audacious Goal, or BHAG—a term coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies—is a long-term, 10-to-20-year goal guided by your company’s core values and purpose.
But it’s more than just a goal.
We’re talking about a challenge that is so audacious, outside the box, and hairy that it might feel as if you’d never achieve it. We’re talking about a JFK ‘put a man on the moon’ level goal here. However, your BHAG must be connected to your company’s underlying strategy, or else it just becomes an aspirational statement or a random number.
Why is it critical? Because everyone in your business needs this northern star, southern cross, Everest-like goal, that they can stay focused on. So, when you’re going through all the craziness, they can keep their eye on the prize and stay aligned.
Why does it need to be 10–20 years? Because nobody can debate you. You can almost come up with anything, a man-on-the-moon type thing. But if you have any shorter goal, everyone will weigh in and convince you that you can’t achieve it.
Your BHAG is a concept of your company’s future that you can use to shape your business strategy. BHAGs are useful for any company, particularly for steering small or new businesses in the right direction. As the business grows, it is most useful in alignment. Of course, having a BHAG won’t help much, however, if you don’t develop a plan for making the vision real. But the big goal comes first.
If you would like some help with pulling together the strategic plan for your business, you can book 15 minutes to talk about coaching here at TimeWithShane.com.
