Today we are talking all about building a strategic plan for your business with Staci Hauschild. Staci is a director of operations and ClickUp consultant. Her goal is to help female entrepreneurs grow their businesses by stepping into their CEO roles and making actionable plans for the future.

 

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Meet Staci

Staci Hauschild is a director of operations and ClickUp consultant. She helps feminist entrepreneurs smash the patriarchy via strategic planning and business management so CEOs can create positive change in the world, increase their profits, and take real (business-free) vacations. 

Staci has lived all over the world and now calls Oaxaca, Mexico, home where she lives with her two rescue pups and a collection of rescue cats. She enjoys hiking, collecting rare tropical plants and cacti, and believes that every day should start with a strong cup of coffee and a good book.

 

What advice would you give to business owners who don’t yet have a solidified vision/mission? What role does this vision play in a business?

Staci starts off by stating that having a vision for your business is important because it helps business owners and team members alike understand the ‘why’ behind their business. Knowing this ‘why’ helps entrepreneurs understand their long-term goals, which helps them prioritize projects, opportunities, and launches. This leads to more driven and focused planning and action steps.

Staci then acknowledges that sometimes there is external pressure to make your personal business vision look like that of other bigger or more successful companies in an attempt to replicate their success. But Staci highlights the importance of making a vision that is specific to you and your business. 

She expands on this point by saying that the first and most important step to ensuring that a vision is truly your own, is deciding what you want for your life, family, yourself, etc.

For this step, she gives an example using the amount of time a business owner would like to work per day. She points out that most people don’t want to work 12-14 hours a day, so they should decide how much they want to work consistently, and build their strategic plan around that goal. Entrepreneurs should repeat this process for all their most important wants, needs, and goals. 

Staci also emphasizes the fact that these goals can change over time as wants and needs evolve.

Moving forward, Staci states that the second most important step in determining your vision is determining your personal and business values. These values will act as a guiding compass in a strategic plan. They help make decisions about what direction you want to go, what to say yes to, and what to say no to.

In short, she says a  vision doesn’t have to be a big grandiose thing, it’s more important to ensure that whatever your vision is, it just feels good for you!

 

What are the key elements that business owners need to be aware of when creating a strategic plan? 

Staci answers this question by immediately highlighting the importance of these two points: money and data. 

She starts by elaborating on her first point: money. She says that once you have established a vision, you can then take a look at the specific goals you have for revenue and what revenue needs to be in order to support your mission/vision.

This leads her to her next point: data. When making goals based on revenue and money, it is very important to make those goals based on real data. Staci explains that when money goals are not based on data, they are not accurately reflective of what your business is capable of doing at that moment. 

When goals are based on real data, this ensures that entrepreneurs make realistic goals on a practical timeline. This results in more attainable goals that are more effective at consistently moving a business toward its overall vision. 

To sum up, Staci states that, after the vision, making data-driven financial decisions and goals is the next step toward your vision and in making your strategic plan. She sums up the importance of this step by saying, “…Data doesn’t have to be scary. What’s scary is doing the same thing over and over again and not seeing results and not knowing why.”

 

What are the next steps for entrepreneurs who have set solid profit-based goals, so that they can work towards achieving those goals? 

Staci continues to build on her previous point by saying that once you have set those data-driven profit goals, take a look at client/service capacity. 

She suggests asking yourself questions like: 

  • What is selling and how much have we made from it? 
  • What is our current capacity for clients/services? 
  • Do we need to raise our prices? 

After this, Staci says to calculate how many clients/sales you need in order to reach your revenue/profit goals. From there, you are can break it down into specific sales goals and numbers to work towards. For example, if you need to make X amount of sales, how many applications do you need to receive? How much marketing do we need to do to get that number of applications? Etc.

 

What advice would you give to business owners who are wanting to clear out the daily clutter from their businesses and how do they decide what needs to stop, start, etc.?

Staci begins by saying that the most effective way she has seen entrepreneurs pinpoint the slack in their business, is by going back to their team and having an honest conversation about it. 

She continues by saying that, when it comes to operations, your team will have a great perspective on how things are going, where bottlenecks are, and where things could be better. She then gives a couple of examples of questions business owners could ask their internal team members:

  • What bottlenecks do they see?
  • Do they feel like there is a way they could be contributing better to the business where they currently are not?

Continuing, Staci also points out that a lot of things feel like clutter when you’re not focused on what you should be focused on. She explains that clutter can be an over-stuffed inbox, but it can also be not being able to concentrate simply because you are overloaded and overwhelmed

Staci then stresses the importance of recognizing that you can’t do everything all the time. This is where you should reflect on your vision and overall goals. From there, break it down, so you know what should you should be spending the majority of your time on in Q1 and what has to wait until Q2. 

She concludes by reminding entrepreneurs that they can only do so much at a certain time. Having a vision and strategic plan makes sure business owners are dedicating their time to the right projects.

 

How do business owners know what to prioritize first? 

Staci starts off by again focusing on the importance of having a vision. She says to take a look at your vision and goals, both personal and financial, and then assess where you are now and what you need to focus on to be able to get where you want to go. 

She continues with an example, if you want to create a course in your business, but have a super small audience. Consider taking a quarter to work on marketing and growing your audience, and push your course launch/development back a quarter. You now have a clear direction about what to focus on during the next two quarters.

She adds that it helps to periodically put all of your ideas and thoughts into one place and then decide which ideas are most important to you and worth pursuing. This weeds out ideas that are no longer relevant, cleans out clutter, and helps you pinpoint the projects with the highest priority. 

 

If you’re ready to start building a strategic plan for your business, connect with Staci by checking out the links below!

 

 

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How To Build A Strategic Plan For Your Business With Staci Hauschild

March 8, 2023

strategic