Are you feeling a bit confused by strategic thinking? How is it different to tactical thinking because both are important for your success in life/career/business?
To sum up the key differences between a strategy and a tactic is simple: A strategy is your overall plan to achieve your goals, while a tactic is a method used to implement the intended strategy.
As you can see strategic thinking skills are essential for your career and your business, but how do you actually do it?
Here are five questions you should ask yourself to really sharpen your strategic thinking. Ask them to gain clarity on the strategies you want to develop to move you forward in your life/career/business.
The most important thing to work out is where you want to be. Everything—goals, strategies, steps, should all be pointing to your desired destination.
Do you want to be CEO, or be running your own company?
Get it all down on paper and think big!
Do a survey of exactly where you are right now.
What skills, resources, and assets do you have? What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and risks in your current job or business?
Map out your network and what value you provide to them, and what they offer you. Write up your self-inventory.
Think about what is in your control at the present moment; you don’t need to worry about anything that isn’t directly under your control which can be kind of liberating!
What can you streamline or eliminate?
This can include anything from training, networking opportunities, to investment advice or strategic career planning.
Take another look at your self-inventory.
If this is difficult or overwhelming, consider finding a mentor or life coach who can help you find your way.
Really going for success shouldn’t make for a joyless life, totally focused on getting ahead. Make sure you take time to have fun and do the things that give you pleasure. Think of what Future Successful You enjoys doing. What makes your future worth striving for?
Write down all the fun things you will do, whether it’s staying in 5-star hotels or being able to work for only half the year. Imagine driving your dream car. See yourself in your future executive suite.
Now, one of the biggest issues that stops you from planning and building for the future is by staying in the past.
Remember: the past doesn’t equal the future!
If you keep looking back, you will never move forward, so let’s look at how you can let go of the past and build a fantastic future!
You read much about why you should let go of the past. However, it’s more important to know how to do it. Most people will eventually come to grips with why they should do it. They get stuck on actually taking steps to make it happen.
Learn from your past experiences. There are learning nuggets contained within your past. Anything you have done or tried before is up for grabs in the University of your past. It’s up to you to recognize what those lessons are and how to use them effectively. The way to use them is to determine why they happened and how to avoid them in the future.
Consider learning meditation. When you are relaxed, you will have an easier time of purging your past. One of the best forms of relaxation is meditation. It takes several sessions to get your body and mind in tune with the techniques. Don’t expect fast solutions with this. The key is to keep doing it until you feel the effects.
Don’t hide from your past. People try to pretend certain aspects of their past did not happen, especially the more embarrassing moments. However, this may cause them to come back to you with a vengeance since they are bottling up within you. Acknowledge everything about your past but commit to pushing forward.
Don’t expect all changes to occur immediately. Your past habits may be difficult to break. Therefore, don’t try to change everything in one shot. Give it time. It took a long time to develop those bad habits.
If you are too hard on yourself about your past, stop. It’s okay to acknowledge that you made some mistakes but don’t get overly critical of them.
Concentrate on the good aspects of your past. Sometimes, you may focus on your mistakes and mask the fact that you had some wonderful experiences in the past as well. These are equally important.
Of course, using strategic thinking exercises takes a lot of self-discipline which many of us lack, so if you want to learn about how to harness the power of self-discipline, please download the featured resource below, read it and take action 🙂
Have you ever wondered why some online marketers seem to be so much more successful than others?
Or why one marketer bounces back from a failure within days, while another one gives up and begs for his old job back?
Or why you see some online marketers everywhere, and other marketers hear only crickets?
Many successful businesspeople and entrepreneurs realise that your thoughts have a huge impact on how you see yourself and thus impact on your actions or lack thereof!
And wouldn’t you like to know how to improve the way you think about yourself?
Here are seven mindset hacks that help to set some online marketers apart from others. Use them for yourself and you can boost your chances of success almost instantly! What have you got to lose…?
Successful online marketers believe in themselves and their business.
You’ve got to believe that you are fully capable of building this six or seven figure business, that you are able to bring tremendous value to your customers, and that you can overcome any adversity that gets in your way.
Obstacles will always be there but if you believe that you can do it, you are already halfway there.
Some marketers don’t look beyond what niche they’re going to enter and what their domain name should be.
But you need to have a plan in place, a roadmap you can follow when you get stalled.
If so, what problems will those products fix or what benefits will they give the customer? Will you blog? Podcast? Make videos?
Your plan can be flexible and change as needed, but the importance of having a plan in the first place is unquestionable.
Without vision and goals – both of which will be in your plan – you’ll get up in the morning without a clue of what you should be doing. And that is a recipe for failure.
You’re going to be doing things you’ve never done before. It’s going to be uncomfortable, and even scary. You might be afraid to take the next step.
And all of that is perfectly normal. The key is to embrace the fear and do the things you need to do anyway.
But if you embrace the new and unknown, there is no limit to what you can do.
Try to reframe challenges that you face and make you uncomfortable into opportunities to learn and grow and see your life and business flourish
As an online marketer, you’ve got to think about the big picture. What is your end goal – to make $100,000 a year? Or maybe to build a million-dollar business and sell it? What campaigns will you use to reach your customers over the coming year? What is your marketing strategy for the following year?
It’s easy to get so bogged down in the little stuff, that we lose sight of the big picture. But if all you ever focus on is the big picture, you’ll never get anything done today.
Figure out the three things you should be doing every single day that will bring in more business.
And then no matter what, before you quit for the day, make sure that you have done those three things.
For example, maybe it’s writing and sending an email to your list to make sales, posting on social media to get new subscribers, and contacting 3 possible affiliates to promote for you.
Whatever your three things are, do them every single day and you are guaranteed to be successful.
When you first start creating success habits, you can also try rewarding yourself for keeping to them to positively reinforce the habits. The reward doesn’t have to be big; it is just there to help you to ingrain the habit in you.
Too many online marketers make the grave mistake of creating a product and then going in search of customers for that product. This seldom works.
Then find out what they want and need and sell that to them.
Repeat after me: “Audience first, product second.”
This last one is two-fold, and yet I find they are intricately intertwined.
Give yourself to your audience without holding back. Do you suffer from the same stupid mistakes they make? Then let them know that. Do you have an answer to your readers’ problem? Let them know what it is.
You cannot go wrong by being generous. And you also cannot go wrong by being honest.
Tell them the shortcomings of the product you are promoting. The REAL shortcomings. Show your human side. Talk about your own trials and tribulations and struggles.
Hey, you’re not perfect? Your audience already knew that, but they’re mighty glad to hear you say it. It makes you one of them.
Post a card above your desk – “Honesty and Generosity.”
Master these seven keys in your life and your business, and you cannot go wrong.
By the way, if you want to learn more about developing your mindset, download this free report, How To Develop A Strong Mindset which will give you much more information.
Just click on the Featured Resource image below.
If you want to succeed at anything in life, not many people will realise that the first step to success starts between their ears with what they think because what and how they think will determine how they act in a certain situation and if you don’t have an abundance mindset and the accompanying habits, your chances of success will certainly be much less than someone who does think this way.
A success habit is always evolving.
Don’t do something just because you should. Check in with yourself every 30 days to make sure that the path you’re on is the one you want to stay on.
Make sure you’re not abandoning something out of fear of failure. There’s a big difference between doing what’s right for you and doing something that feels easier.
These are things that work to get you to take the next step. For example, if you need to go for a run to clear your head and get some time to think, then do that.
Starting off with motivational reminders is like eating breakfast in the morning – it helps fuel you throughout your day. You also want to spend a minute or two looking back over your day and being proud of what you did accomplish.
Your success begins with an idea, a hope – a dream. If you go all out, driving hard, keeping your nose to the grindstone, you can reach the point where your mindset becomes fixed.
All you can see is the end result rather than the journey. Remember that on your way to getting what you define as success, you will never have these days filled with learning curves again.
If your goal is to live on the beach in a nice home, make sure your routinely revisit those plans to keep you inspired with your action taking.
You need to have a success mindset that keeps you learning even when you feel you’ve made it.
Seek out new resources online, book, new niche leaders who teach things from a different perspective – anything that helps round your education out.
You want to have someone in your life that you’re accountable to. Make time to meet with someone who can help keep you on track for reaching your success.
Sometimes you won’t have a specific person in your life capable of doing that. You can turn to a paid life coach or even join a forum of like-minded, positive individuals all striving for their own success.
When you go after what you want in life, there will always be someone waiting to tell you that something is either a good idea or a bad idea.
You’ll feel it as knots in the pit of your stomach or as a sense of unease. When you begin trusting yourself in these situations, it helps you develop a sense of self-confidence and strength.
You have to determine ahead of time that you won’t give up – you won’t surrender a growth mindset to a fixed one. Roadblocks can often be used as character builders.
They can strengthen your resolve and help you learn to become more resourceful as you find another way to do what you want to get done. If you become too comfortable with your efforts, you often don’t achieve the ultimate success that you’re after.
Whenever you do something that you start to feel a bit of shame over (like quitting on a project), ask yourself if you’re doing it because you don’t believe enough in yourself to succeed.
If that ends up being the case, take the task and break it up into micro-sized mini goals that you can work on to see if you’re capable of making progress that way. Sometimes, it’s the simple fact that a project seems too big that ruins many of the best plans.
It’s also a good idea to surround yourself with action-taking, positive people. Take inventory of the kinds of people you’re currently surrounded with. Do they always complain about everything?
Do you find yourself commiserating with people stuck in the same boat as you? If so, jump out and swim to shore – because that boat is sinking fast, and you don’t want to be swallowed up by the pity party they’re throwing for themselves.
Seek out motivational experts whose thoughts align with what you find inspiring. Tune in to their messages or read their books daily as if you’re taking a vitamin designed to prevent illness.
Over time, you’re going to become someone who others look to for support, and you’ll notice they come to you with fixed mindsets. They’ll be attracted to the positivity you project. Make sure you turn their mind around, rather than letting their limited thoughts infect you.
By the way, if you want to learn more about this, download this free report, How To Develop A Strong Mindset which includes this article and much more information.
Just click on the Featured Resource image below.
Do you remember when you were younger, and everyone was telling you that you could be anything you wanted to be? It’s strange because many of those people will have turned out to be hypocrites. Tell them now that you want to be the next Bill Gates and they’ll probably tell you to stop daydreaming and get a job. Nice.
But the fact is that they were right the first time. It actually is possible to be anything you want to be and the amazing thing is that it’s easier today than it ever has been. Let’s take a look at why that is…
Actually, being whatever you want to be is incredibly easy. Want to be a writer? Then start writing tonight. Congratulations! You are now a writer! Want to be a swimmer? Then start swimming. Congratulations! You are now a swimmer!
Once you realize this, things get better right away. You don’t have to make your day job ‘who you are’ because you can make your hobby ‘who you are’ – or your side project. It doesn’t matter if you hate your work and it’s not satisfying as long as you’re doing something else that gives you hope and purpose.
And if you try hard enough, then eventually you will be able to go professional with what you do. The reason is that if you write enough, you will eventually learn how to get good at it and how to find clients. Ever heard of the ‘10,000 hour rule’?
It means that you can put 10,000 hours into anything and become a master of it that way. Do the thing you love every night then and you will eventually be great at it.
What if the opportunity to make it big never comes? Well in that case you can make the opportunity.
And who cares even if it’s successful? Now you’re a writer or a singer and lots of people have seen your work. So honestly… you really can be anything you want to be!
Ever wanted to change the world? Come on, be honest…
Most of us on some level would probably like it if we could make a big impact on the world or do something amazing at least but we’re too afraid too because we don’t think that it’s something we can possible accomplish.
But what you maybe don’t realize is that ‘the others’ are people who were once in the exact same position as you but who had the nerve to try anyway. Everyday people like you and me change the world all the time and believe it or not, there’s actually a formula for doing it!
The first step to changing the world is to define what it is you want to achieve and then own it. Most of us will never change the world because we don’t think that we’re capable of it and so we keep it to ourselves.
But as soon as you start acknowledging what you really want to achieve and you start going for it, then you will be able to define your plan of action and you will get attention from people who will be moved by your passion, ambition and dedication.
Big ideas will often get attention and a following much quicker than small ones. And that’s how you move on to the next stage.
This is the part that most people don’t consider. Sure, you might lack the funding or the authority to change the world, but if you have a good enough idea… then you can find someone who does have the power to.
This is what Palmer Luckey did when he decided he wanted to make virtual reality a reality (ironic though that sounds). First he admitted to himself that that’s what he wanted.
Then he shouted about it on Kickstarter and got a huge backing and then he took the idea to powerful people like John Carmack and Mark Zuckerberg. They gave him the funding, the resources and the knowhow and now the Oculus Rift is poised to genuinely change the world.
He started in his basement and he got to where he is in just a few years… and you can do the exact same thing!
Going big is often the best way to ensure your success – create enough output, take enough chances and eventually you’ll be sure to have a hit or ten under your belt which for many of us will be more than enough.
But while working hard enough is often the secret to almost guaranteed success, you mustn’t also Underestimate The Power Of Working Smart.
What it means to work smart is basically to be strategic in the way that you approach any problem or any ambition. In turn, this means approaching your aims in such a way that you will be able to cut corners and accomplish the most with the minimal effort.
Putting in 10,000 hours is a great way to become an expert – but the quality of those 10,000 hours also makes a big difference.
The 80/20 rule, also sometimes know as the ‘Pareto Principle’, basically states that whatever it is that you do, 20% of your effort will yield 80% of your success.
So if you sell 100 products, chances are that 20 of them (or even fewer) will make up the vast majority of your cash.
The moral of this story is that if you ‘throw enough paint at the wall’ some is bound to stick.
In the case of a business providing a service, it will often be that the company makes the vast majority of its money from just a few clients while the others serve as nothing but a distraction really. In other cases, it might be that a small number of clients cause the vast majority of the problems.
In such a case, it would be wise for that business to lose the 20% causing the 80% of the problem and even to get rid of some of those clients that aren’t bringing much to the table.
Instead, focus purely on the ones that are generating the most income and actually life will be easier and you’ll earn much more. Then you can put in huge effort and see huge rewards for both them and you!
If you want to achieve a lot in life, sometimes the secret is to stop trying so hard and to put out lower quality work.
Wait… what?
That’s not what they told you at school right? And it probably goes against pretty much everything you’ve been brought up to believe as well. But in fact it is very often the case when it comes to really being successful so let’s take a look at why.
What I’m talking about here is ‘failing fast’. In business, this means creating your ‘minimal viable product’ or your ‘MVP’ and releasing that as quickly as possible. So a company will create a product that is really sub-par in many ways and that certainly could be better and then they’ll release ten more.
In the same time another company that doesn’t take the fail fast approach might only release a single product that’s much better quality.
Well it comes down to the fact that these ‘minimal viable products’ require smaller investment and allow you to get something out the door faster. That means that you can beat the competition to market and it means that you don’t lose out on such a big investment as you otherwise might do. More importantly, it means you can quickly release something else again next week as well.
As a result you’ll be able to rapidly test the market and get an idea for whether or not people want to buy your product. If you get lots of interest and lots of sales then you know that it’s worth your while to invest even more time and even more effort into that particular version because there’s a market there to buy it. If you don’t get any interest? You move on, having taking the minimal financial hit.
Meanwhile, the company that invested all their time, effort and money on creating one fantastic product might risk that product failing and costing them huge amounts, possibly ending the business.
The ‘fail fast’ technique can also be applied to other areas of your life. Basically this means releasing a ‘beta’ version into the public and you can do this in all kinds of situations.
Some people will look the other way, but when someone finally smiles back, then you can go over and invest the time.
See what other areas you can apply the fail fast approach to!
Want to increase your likelihood at success? Then simply try more often.
In gambling this isn’t a good idea because it means you’ll lose a hundred times before you win and go broke. But in life things are different. In life, you can ‘fail’ thousands of times and bounce back stronger than you were before… But you only need one win. If you ‘play the numbers’ then, you can effectively rig yourself to succeed no matter what you do.
I have a friend who applies this logic to dating. He’s a funny guy and every time we go on a night out, he will set off to approach lots of women.
If you’ve done the math, then 9/10 fails means that on a typical number he’ll succeed with one or two women… which means he’s basically getting more action than all of us put together. Now that’s success!
You can also apply this to making money, as I once did.
When Kindle first came out, there was something of a ‘gold rush’ as people clamored to upload e-books to Amazon. I started out by uploading a book or two and it got a couple of downloads a month – I was happy, if underwhelmed.
Can you guess what I did? For one year I uploaded an e-book or two every single day and by the end I had hundreds of e-books in the store. All of them got at least two downloads a day and two of them went massive… the result? A huge ‘passive income’ that would pay my wages travelling for the whole subsequent year.
The moral of the story? You make your own luck. Play the game enough and you will win and make it big!
I once heard a famous motivational and sales speaker tell the story of someone who set some goals.
It seems he wrote down all of his great big goals like getting a super high paying job, traveling the world, starting a non-profit foundation and so forth, folded up the paper and put it in a drawer.
Then he forgot all about those goals and went about his life.
Fast forward three years, and he’s moving into his new house. Packing up that drawer, he finds the goal list he wrote out, and realizes he has accomplished every single goal on that list, including buying a mansion.
Yeah. Right.
And then a leprechaun jumped out of the drawer and handed him a magic genie lamp, and he made three wishes and married the fairy princess.
As you might have guessed, I’m not buying that story. Are you?
But there are things you can do to help you achieve your goals and New Year’s resolutions – things I’ll bet NO ONE has told you about.
Things that can give you the life you want, if you embrace them.
Things that… well… might just set your goal getting abilities on fire.
Let’s get started:
Focusing on what you want usually isn’t going to work unless you also consider what kind of pain you want to have.
Everyone wants a rock hard body and a few million dollars in the bank. But are you willing to go through the pain it costs to get those things?
THAT is the question.
An art fan tells a great artist that she should would do ANYTHING to paint like he does.
To which the artist replies, “If that were so, then you would already be painting like me. I’ve painted every single day since I was seven years old. I painted when my friends were outside playing. In high school I painted when my friends were going to dances and playing sports. In college I painted instead of dating. I’ve taken art courses and studied art until I know more than most of my professors. I’ve traveled the world to sit at the feet of great painters and observe their process. I’ve given everything I have to be a great painter. And if you really wanted to be like me, you would have done the same.”
Ouch.
That artist paid a very big price for achieving his goal.
What pain are you willing to go through to achieve your goals?
What you willing to do?
What will you sacrifice?
What regiment, training, practice schedule and so forth will you commit to doing every day until you succeed?
When you decide this in advance, you multiply the odds of achieving your goal by ten-fold.
“I want to be a medical doctor.”
Okay, that’s your goal. But what do you do to achieve that goal? Writing it down and stuffing it into a drawer won’t make it happen.
You need systems in place to get you from where you are to where you want to be.
For a pianist, his goal is to give concerts to millions of people. But his system is to practice each day of his life.
For a coach, her goal is to win the championship. But the system is the practices she puts her players through each day.
For an entrepreneur, the goal is to build a profitable business and sell it. But the system is the sales and marketing process that brings in the customers, as well as the system for delivering the products or services.
Without systems in place to reach your goals, you won’t get there.
First, you choose your goal based on both what you want and what pain you are willing to endure to get that goal.
Then you choose the system you’re going to use to achieve that goal.
You’ve made your goals and now you’ve got a list – the kind of list a kid might send to Santa Clause – so what’s the delay? Why aren’t you achieving your goals?
Imagine you’re growing roses. On one rose bush, there are a hundred rosebuds. But on the other rose bush, you snip off every single bud except for one.
Which rose flower will be the biggest? The one by itself, of course. And that’s because it gets all of the energy and food the plant can provide, instead of having to share it with a hundred other flowers.
Your goals are all competing for your time and energy.
That’s why you’ve got to ruthlessly eliminate your lesser goals, at least until you achieve your biggest goal.
The exception: If a secondary goal directly supports your primary goal, then it can be best to pursue both at once.
For example, you want to build a business. It’s going to be a lot easier to make good decisions and work hard if you get enough exercise and eat right.
Exercise and proper eating support your goal of building a business, so don’t wait until the business is built to get in shape. Start exercising and eating healthy right away, so you have what it takes to build that business and live the good life.
And once you achieve your first big goal, you just might find you’re addicted to the process.
Guaranteed, the second goal will be easier than the first, because now you’ll know what it takes.
The New Year is upon us. 12 months from now, you can either look back and wish you had achieved that big goal, or look back and be thrilled that you did.
The choice is yours.
