A Word on Strategies

Much to the boss’s chagrin, it has been a solid month since the last Emogen blog post. But who can blame us/me? We’ve had quite the summer at e-town… newer-, bigger- and funner-than-ever projects, new employees and partners, office remodeling and people shuffling, computer crashing complete with lots of prayer and begging for file recovery, the possibility of some pretty interesting things on the horizon… all topped off with the discovery of yet another pregnancy for yours truly.

(inhale... exhale...)

All the usual sayings apply: good things come in threes, success breeds success, when it rains it pours, blah blah blah.

It’s in nutty times like these that our short- and long-term strategies have really been a blessing. Because our course is already semi-mapped out, we can breathe a little easier as the torrential rain hits the windshield.

Without a solid game plan we’d likely veer off course and wonder as the rain cleared how we made it to BFE. Instead, a plan sort of acts like Bear Grylls’s machete, providing a little area to step which has been cleared of some of the unknowns the jungle has to offer.

So, how to begin the task of crafting a strategy for your business? Google it and you’ll find a bazillion examples and plans and tools to help you out… no two exactly alike.

Lots of business planners and consultants will also tell you that you must write out your business plan. I used to be of that camp until my dad (a business professor specializing in entrepreneurship) changed my mind. His opinion is that there’s obvious value in writing out a plan because it forces a business owner to think through every detail, but that lots of people get stuck in the details and don’t stay limber enough to adapt. That and the only people on earth who really care about a business plan’s existence are lenders.

Needless to say, at Emogen we don’t have a written out, hard copy of our plan; but we do have thoroughly discussed, well-chewed short and long term plans outlining where we want to be and how we intend to get there. And as changes, trends or opportunities arise, we add that into the discussion—which, it seems, is never-ending—and re-strategize along the way.

In all honesty, though, there does exist one tangible piece to our plan… a rather large excel spreadsheet of our historical sales and revenue figures complete with quarterly, semi-annual and annual averages that help me keep track of trends. The model also has a 60-month projected cash flow with flags for points at which adding staff or equipment is plausible. And all that rolls up into a year over year dashboard so that we can easily glimpse how our present trending might play out over the next 5 years. My justification for this monstrosity is that it helps us see where we’ve been (numerically speaking) so that we can use that information to shape where we’re going.

One final thought on strategies before we close: when you’re picturing your business’s future, don’t put yourself in a box. There’s a great Harvard Business Review article called Marketing Myopia circa 1960 that I encourage all business owners to read. My favorite tidbit from it involves the railroad industry failing to define itself as being in the business of transportation. Instead, it myopically said “we’re in the business of railroads” and as the broader world of transportation developed and changed, the railroad was left in the dust.

So, today’s recap:
1. A long term plan for your business is a must; but
2. Plan without being freakish about it; still
3. There are bound to be details that really matter and therefore should be tracked; and, finally,
4. Don’t be narrow-minded about what your business can become further on down the road.

~Sarah, Emogen marketer