Getty Images
In my experience, any thoughtful strategic plan you develop to scale and grow your business will take a minimum of 18 months and up to 5 years to execute. At my school for business owners, Birthing of Giants, we view each 12 months as a fundamental building block to achieving these long-term milestones. The advantage of accumulating plans over a year is that you have to think long term, but you have to act in the short term.
For example, when Bob Eisiminger wanted to achieve his long-term goal of selling Knight Point Systems, his Northern Virginia-based technical staffing company, he spent the first year rebuilding his recruiting department. This allowed it to fill vacancies faster and with better candidates, leading to increased revenue and profits.
As year two approaches, for his next one-year plan, Bob has sought and implemented advice from our post-exit entrepreneurial faculty to make his business as attractive as possible to potential buyers. This involved cleaning up its finances and obtaining certifications that made the company eligible for larger contracts. He then equipped his management team with long-term compensation packages to ensure that in the event of a sale, the most valuable people would remain with the company during the transition.
By the third year, Bob was ready to see how attractive his business was in the marketplace. His plan for the third year from today? Interview investment bankers and choose one. Then, work with these bankers to prepare a pitch deck telling the company’s story and present it to potential buyers. At the end of his third year of using this 12-month strategic planning process, he received a cash offer of $250 million..
He would spend the following year – the fourth year of his plan – negotiating terms of sale and helping with the transition, personally walking away with more than $130 million at the time of closing.
Bob discussed the strategic planning process working backwards from the desired outcome to sell and exit the business within four years. His plan went like this:
- Year 1: Rebuilding your recruitment service from the base to achieve the final goal.
- Year 2: Clean up the company, toughen up managementbecome eligible for larger contracts
- Year 3: Find the buyer
- Year 4: Complete exit transition
Most of the entrepreneurs I work with haven’t given much thought to how a one-year plan leads to a longer-term outcome. Additionally, they haven’t developed the systematic culture that turns one-year plans into reality. Keep in mind that within each 12-month roadmap are four 90-day campaigns and twelve 30-day sprints. Ritualizing these campaigns and sprints creates a lot of clarity for a leadership team working with limited resources and multiple initiatives.
Shiny Ball Syndrome – Our Secret Superpower
Having worked with entrepreneurs for decades while running my own business, I know how we think. We became a boss because we believed we would be more accountable for achieving our goals than any supervisor ever could. At the same time, no one is better positioned than us to respond to market changes because we are in touch with every aspect of the business. A new pricing system, a faster delivery schedule, a better value proposition: these kinds of changes come from our ability to listen to the market and then chart a new path forward. We are sometimes accused of having “shiny ball syndrome”. Too many pivots with too little explanation disrupt the people we need to help us implement. However, in my experience, these micro-pivots are our unique value proposition as entrepreneurs and visionaries. From these incremental changes could come your next big innovation or opportunity.
Combining a thoughtful plan one year from today with market-responsive micro-pivots can be the difference between success and failure. Your one-year plan is the backbone of your 90-day campaigns, 30-day sprints, and micro-pivots. And when you accumulate your wins over a year over time, you can achieve huge results. This 12-month-at-a-time strategic planning process allows the business owner to execute a multi-year strategy needed to make your business bigger than you ever imagined, while avoiding years of testing and Wasted mistakes and wrong turns.