You don’t need a business plan you need an Excite Strategy
When most people start a business they focus on their idea, the company they want to create and/or the needs of the market.
That’s great but we’ve realised that if you just focus on the external bits of your business it can come at the cost of your own wellbeing.
We’ve seen too many people forget why they started their business in the first place and focus only on the money. They find themselves on a path created by others and they lose touch with what they need for themselves.
We experienced this when we built our digital agency. It was doing well and we were told that to be successful we needed to grow the headcount and start opening new offices.
This didn’t feel right to either of us but we couldn’t clearly articulate why. Growing the business would mean more money but that didn’t excite us.
There was nothing specifically wrong with that model but for us something was missing.
At that time we’d already launched The Happy Startup School and through our growing community we were able to get some help.
Working with some of our mentors we realised that we had needs that would not be met by growing the agency.
By tuning into what those needs were we got the confidence to close down the agency and commit fully to The Happy Startup School.
10 years on and we’re still going strong.
Why is leading with needs important?
You get to a point in your professional journey where things get tiring and you start to feel drained. Work becomes a slog that you just persist with in order to get to the other side. But you’re no longer sure what “the other side” means and so it feels even harder.
You’ve lost your mojo and theres no more excitement in your work.
And so you feel less creative.
Your work becomes more challenging and you fall into an energetic spiral downwards.
Leading with needs is important work because it helps you tune into what is actually wrong… so that you can then do something about it.
It usually isn’t about getting a promotion or getting more money.
We’ve seen that it’s always about something deeper.
When you have clarity about what that is it’s a lot easier to know what to do next.
In an uncertain world where things can suddenly shift being able to have the confidence to change direction without second guessing yourself is a valuable skill.
And it’s a skill that needs to be learned and continuously practised.
A lot of people join our program looking for a plan; a nice sequence of steps that they can follow so that they can get to success.
However, what they really need is a strategy:
- a real understanding of their current problem (i.e. I’m not feeling fulfilled anymore, my career has stagnated, I’m bored with my business, I don’t have any clarity about the future)
- a set of guiding principles to help you know what to do next (i.e. what are my core needs and how does it feel when they’re being met or unmet)
- actions based on those principles (i.e saying hell yeah or hell no to opportunities that come your way)
The beauty of a good strategy is that you’re not fixated on the destination and so you can quickly and confidently change direction when needed.
One of the guiding principles we share on the program is to have a real understanding of your core needs.
How do you figure out your core needs?
It can be difficult to do to this work on your own and that’s why we designed Vision 20/20 as a group program. We’ve learned the hard way that discovering your core needs are is a more collaborative process than people think.
On the program we ask participants to recall experiences they’ve had at work to understand what made them feel energised and motivated and what made them feel exhausted and drained.
This could be to do with people they worked with, the tasks they performed or environments they were working in. It’s an energy audit to discover where they thrived and where they struggled… and then to find out why.
The finding out why is where being in a group really helps. Through sharing, getting feedback and reflecting you get to see what’s really the cause of your discontent.
Laurence and I thrive when making things and collaborating. It’s why we started the agency in the first place.
However, we go to a point where we were making things we didn’t really believe in and were just following orders rather than having a real say in the direction of projects.
With this understanding it made perfect sense to close down the agency and work on something more aligned to our needs.
Finding product / founder fit
One of the assignments we set on the program is to create your Purpose Playbook.
This is a key part of any design brief for a business. It’s a solid foundation from which you can experiment and play. You’re more willing to take risks and bets on uncertain opportunities when you’re tuned into what success really means and feels to you.
With a playful attitude you become less fixated on one idea and more willing to explore different ways to meet your needs while meeting the needs of others.
This is when you get “product / founder fit”; the Venn diagram where you and who you want to help has maximum overlap.
To get here is a process of linking the work you want to do to your own personal journey and understand what it is that you are most aligned to do?
The final exercise of the Purpose Playbook is to craft a two or three word mantra that captures the essence of what’s in the whole playbook.
Mine and Laurence’s mantras are “effortless impact” and encapsulates our needs for creativity, freedom and contribution.
Everything we’ve done in business to date has been guided by this mantra.
And we wouldn’t have been able to articulate it without understanding our needs.
So, what are your core needs?
And how are the actions that you’re taking now aligning to them?
If you’d like to learn more about our Vision 20/20 program watch this video where we talk more in depth about how to Lead with Needs.
