What’s the Endgame for Your Business?

Hoping, dreaming, wishing, and praying is not a long term strategy for your business (neither is it a short term strategy).

Now don't get me wrong, I am a good Christian woman so I believe in praying and I believe that prayer changes things, but praying alone is not enough.

What do people say? They say you pray, and then you get up as if you have received your answer, your blessing, and you walk in that. You give God something to bless, you get into action. What does that mean? Well one of the ways to prepare your business is to plan for its success. You put a strategic business plan together.

I know the words Strategic Business Plan - when put together freaks people out.

A business plan isn’t bad. You don't have to do the long drawn out business plan that everybody freaks out about. That takes them days, weeks and months to get completed.

You really don’t need that right now.

But you do need to have a strategic vision. You need to have some type of plan in place. You need to know what's the endgame of your business.

Have you ever heard to begin with the end in mind? That's one of the most highly touted strategies for success almost anything you do.

I can hear you ask, “Well, Karen, what do you mean, ‘"What's my endgame? It's to make money!” Sure, but that's not the overarching guiding principle although it IS required in order to have and stay in business!

Simply put, what are you planning to do with your business when it takes off?

Do you want to keep it and pass it down to your children and grandchildren?

Do you want to sell it off for maximum profit?

Do you want it to be your legacy?

Ever heard of Nike? Phil Knight built it so if his son ever decided to take the company, he could (which he did). He did this by creating a powerful internal culture that made and he enrolled his son into.

Do you watch Shark Tank? Kevin O’leary aka Mr. Wonderful, built the Leapfrog learning company specifically to sell it off. He did this by focusing on maximizing income and cutting expenses at every opportunity.

Or maybe you know Beats by Dre? Dr. Dre was the talent behind the headphones that was purchased by Apple for $3.8 billion. From the ground up, Jimmy Iovine was a stickler for cutting operating costs and building a culture that people needed to have a set of headphones for.

And for legacy, have you ever heard of Gary Vaynerchuk? The entire premise of his company is the honey empire, a billion dollar company focused on HR and relationships more than anything else.

So what's your endgame? What do you want to do in the end with your business?

Do you want to keep it forever and ever and ever and put it in your family's inheritance and have it passed down through generation to generation?

Do you want to make it big, huge like Dr Dre did with Beats and then sell it off?

Like Marie Calendar -- where do you see yourself? Do you want to have a restaurant and have everybody come or do you see your food in stores? Do you see it in the frozen food aisle, like White Castle?

In the past, you had to actually go to White Castle. You had to go there to get your two little sliders. And then...they moved to satisfy their customers in another way. Now you can go to the frozen food aisle and get some White Castle Burgers.

Where are you going? You have to know. It will guide your choices because you know where you are going. It can help save Time, Energy and Money from wasteful distracted efforts and focusing on the wrong paths and avoid unnecessary pitfalls.

...this is why wishing, dreaming, and hoping is not a business strategy.

Do you want to have the business forever and work until your 90?

Do you want to just have a nice little thing that pays your bills and gives you complete work-life balance? Or maybe you just want to make some side cash to supplement your lifestyle?

And all of these are fine, the question is what do YOU want?

Or do you want to be like some of my friends? They're like, “Listen, I just want to make enough to open a little hut on the beach somewhere down in the Caribbean. Put my feet up. Sell flip flops and key chains to tourists.”

What do you want to do?

If I told you to turn around and look around your room right now and that there's a bulls-eye hidden somewhere, your first question is going to be, “Where?"

And if I said, “Oh, it's in there somewhere. You just have to hit it, but you know what, I’ll make it easier. You only need to hit the rings surrounding it.”

What are the chances of you finding it? Slim. You’re going to tell me, “You didn't hide a bulls-eye in this room..."

But if I said, “It’s there. Somewhere on the right wall.”

Now you have a better chance of finding it, and hitting it.

The same applies to your business. If you're just aiming anywhere, there's any one of a thousand different combinations of what you could be shooting for. That's why it's important to know your endgame.

That bottom line is what you're building on, where you build and how you build. All of that is determined by your desired endgame for your business.

If you don’t know your endgame, shoot me a DM and let’s chat about it.