Coffee with Ryan

Your business doesn’t need more ideas; it needs a direction

By Ryan Berry

If you own a business, there’s a pretty good chance ideas aren’t your problem. Business owners tend to have plenty of them.

Maybe you should launch a new service. Hire another salesperson. Start posting more on social media. Open another location. Redesign the website. Buy a piece of equipment. Start a podcast. Add another product line. Run more advertising. Finally start using AI. Go after a completely different type of customer.

The list never ends. And that’s exactly the problem.

One of the biggest mistakes I see businesses make isn’t a lack of opportunity. It’s trying to pursue too many opportunities at the same time.

We often assume that growth comes from doing more. Sometimes the best strategy is deciding what not to do.

Imagine a business has 10 potential projects sitting on the table. Each one could legitimately help the company, so the owner starts six of them.

The website redesign gets started but never finished. Someone creates a social media plan that lasts three weeks. The company begins developing a new service but doesn’t quite get it launched. A salesperson gets hired without a clear sales process.

Meanwhile, everyone is still trying to handle the normal day-to-day work of running the business. Six months later, everyone has been extremely busy, but the business isn’t much different. That’s not an effort problem. It’s a direction problem.

A better question for the owner might have been: If we could accomplish only one major thing during the next 90 days, what would make the biggest difference in our business? That’s a much harder question because it forces you to choose.

Maybe the answer is increasing recurring revenue. Maybe it’s fixing customer retention. Maybe it’s improving production capacity. Maybe it’s building a management team so every decision doesn’t have to go through the owner. Maybe it’s finally creating a consistent sales process.

Whatever it is, identifying it changes the conversation. Instead of having 10 priorities, you have one major objective.

Then you can ask another important question: What needs to happen for us to accomplish it? If your goal is increasing sales, simply telling your team to “sell more” isn’t much of a strategy.

You might discover that the real problem is that nobody follows up with leads. Or your salespeople don’t have a clear offer. Or you’re targeting the wrong customers. Or you’re generating plenty of leads but losing them somewhere between the first phone call and the signed contract. Suddenly, you have something you can actually work on.

This doesn’t mean everything else in the business stops.

Payroll still needs processed. Customers still need served. Phones still need answered. Fires will still need put out. But underneath all of that daily activity should be a clear direction.

Your employees should know what the company is trying to accomplish. Your managers should know what matters most. And when a new opportunity comes along, you should be able to ask whether it helps accomplish the current objective or distracts from it.

That’s strategy. Strategy isn’t a 50-page document sitting in a binder on a shelf. It isn’t a

mission statement nobody remembers. And it isn’t a giant list of things you’d like to accomplish someday.

At its simplest, strategy is deciding where you’re going, what matters right now and what you’re willing to say no to in order to get there.

For many business owners, saying no is the hardest part. Entrepreneurs are naturally attracted to opportunities. That’s often how we became entrepreneurs in the first place. We see possibilities everywhere.

But every yes has a cost. Every new project consumes money, time, attention or people. And the more things you divide those resources between, the less attention your most important opportunities receive.

Sometimes the next breakthrough in your business isn’t another idea. It’s finally choosing which idea deserves your full attention.

Question of the Week: If your business could accomplish only one major thing during the next 90 days, what would make the biggest difference? ■