One of the most important things to understand about being an entrepreneur is that there is no “one right path” to success. Each business needs to have its own strategy that works for them. Whilst it may be difficult to follow the strategy at first, strategy execution software from https://www.prosymmetry.com/strategy-execution/ can help businesses to fulfil initiatives and grow the business more effectively.
Every business professional is unique unto the next – meaning that no “one size fits all” approach guarantees prosperity. But one thing that most successful entrepreneurs have in common can be summed up in a single word:
Grit.
Grit is that sense of hard work, passion and perseverance necessary to achieve long-term goals. Some people call it mental toughness, while others call it professional decisiveness. Regardless, many agree that it is a strong predictor of one’s ability to succeed and achieve the goals they’ve set out for themselves.
It’s also a concept that Joseph Ashford Ellis, founder of K4 Media, knows full well. Ashford worked to his current status “the old-fashioned way” – by tirelessly earning promotion after promotion until finally reaching the point of CEO. He amassed significant real-world knowledge and experience during this time, and if anyone is familiar with the way a business should be run, it’s him.
Joseph Ashford believes entrepreneurs aren’t mainly about selling a product or service at all. They’re selling themselves first and foremost. This, in essence, is why long-term business strategy is so important. Yes, all businesses have to be aware of modern trends in terms of how they communicate to customers. But it’s even more important for the entrepreneurs themselves to pay close attention, as it puts them in the best position to plan ahead as much as possible.
Your Business and Marketing Strategies Are Intertwined
Far too many new entrepreneurs make the mistake of assuming a business strategy is all about those far-off goals. They’re so focused on revenue projections and market predictions that they fail to see the forest for the trees. Joseph Ashford believes that what should form the basis of your business strategy is an emphasis on the most valuable asset of all:
Your customers.
Who are these people? What do they like? What do they dislike? What do they want to hear? How are you going to say it to them? The answers to these questions need to form the foundation of your business strategy – and your larger marketing strategy – moving forward.
It’s a big part of the reason why content marketing has become so essential to organisations in nearly every industry you can think of these days. Most entrepreneurs have many demographics they can target. But the key to success involves understanding A.) what messages need to be conveyed at the moment, and B.) on which platforms it all needs to be communicated.
To put it another way, your business strategy may be the document you use to outline the type of business you want to be running in five years based on the objectives you’ve set out for yourself. That marketing strategy, by extension, becomes the tool you’ll use to get there.
Joseph Ashford also believes this helps avoid a major mistake that far too many brands make: They get too caught up with the wrong approach to marketing when their communications and their business strategy stray too far from one another. They stop paying attention to what works about their product or service and start emphasising the wrong parts of it. What they need to focus on are the improvements to their offerings – and to their company – that their specific customers need to be aware of.
In the end, all of this comes back to that larger idea of grit – something that has less to do with how we respond to “extreme situations” than one might think. For Joseph Ashford, that’s less important to his approach to those everyday circumstances that a lot of us take for granted.
It takes time to truly understand your audience in a meaningful way. It requires hard work to learn which communication tools work and, more importantly, which don’t. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to grow and develop as an entrepreneur.
In other words, it takes grit – and as much of it as you can get. You will stumble. You will fall. But that’s okay because grit in relation to your business strategy isn’t about finding some single source of inspiration that will act as the light that shines the way. It’s about building and following small, daily habits that add up to something far more meaningful together than any one of them could be on their own. It’s also about overcoming challenges and distractions again and again and again – resulting in the type of battle-tested business strategy that will serve you and your organization well for years to come.
