← The Amy Porterfield Show
The Amy Porterfield Show
How to Align Your Business Strategy for Long-Term Success
00:39:23
The Smartest Entrepreneurs Know When to Pivot—Here’s How to Spot and Fix a Strategy That’s Holding You Back
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Amy Porterfield
Hey there. Welcome to the Amy Porterfield show. Could your business growth be slowing down not because of a lack of strategy, but because of an anti strategy. You might not know this, but I almost had a coaching program where you could hire a coach on my team, work with them one on one to help you create and launch your digital course from scratch. Sounds good, right? Well, I thought it sounded good as well. And I was really excited for this new opportunity in the business. This was, I don't know, a year or two ago when we started putting it together. And so I'm talking we put everything together. We had a really great name for it. We hired and trained coaches so that when you hired someone, they were trained with the digital course academy model and I got to talk to them and work with them. We put all the systems together to make sure that Slack and email and the portal with all of the information and resources you needed was ready to go. We put all the marketing together. We had hired a salesperson because it was more expensive. I think it was like around $10,000. Could have been a little bit more. But we even hired my first salesperson. She was this wonderful woman. I loved her to do all the sales calls and you know, I'm serious. When I did a brand new webinar from scratch, I created a brand new webinar to promote this new one on one coaching program that we were going to add to the business. And a week before we launched, I got a call from a consultant that I had been working on in the business. I always have a consultant in my business, whether it be to look at my profit margin or to look at my Evergreen funnels, or just to look at my email list, growth or whatever it might be. I usually try to find a consultant and get really specialized in different areas of the business. And the guy that I was working with, he was in the business to help us optimize Evergreen, but he was just incredibly smart. His name is Brian Harris and his company is growth tools. And so he was helping me in so many different areas, even though we were really trying to focus on Evergreen. Well, one day he called me and he said, if you launch that coaching program, you're going to tank the other areas of your business. He's very blunt. And the truth is I started to cry. He had come at me like so matter of fact. And I trusted this guy. He knew my numbers, he knew all the details, he knew the players on my team. And he said, I'm looking at this and I've kind of dug into all of it, you're going to hurt the parts of your business that are thriving, like Digital Course Academy. Not because Digital Course Academy wouldn't sell anymore, but because I, as a leader in my team, were taking our eye off the bread and butter of the business. It wasn't the right time. We still had work to do to optimize the other areas that were already working in the business. And he said, this is a bad idea. I suggest you do not do it. And I started to cry. And I'm embarrassed to say that, but I am a natural crier. Ask Hobie. But I started to cry because I thought, oh, my gosh, we put so much work into this. I created a brand new webinar. That's when you know I'm serious and ready to go. And my CEO was on board. We had counted for the revenue. My marketing team was on board. Customer experience was ready for all the questions to come in, like we were ready. All that hard work and he's saying, don't do it. But I went with my gut. I've since learned if you listen to an episode in June that I do with Patrick Lincione, he has something called working genius. And it's an assessment. And what I found out is that discernment is one of my top, top qualities. And that means, like, going with your gut instinct. And I do that a lot. And my gut was like, he's right, Brian's right. Listen to him. And so I had to go back to my team a week before a huge launch that they all had worked on and said, we are not doing this. And I had to go to a salesperson we just hired and say, I screwed up. And these coaches that were wonderful, that did a whole beta already saying, we're not going to do it. I was embarrassed. I felt defeated. I was mad at myself for not identifying this on my own. And I kind of hated Brian. I like to put blame on others. No, I don't. Just joking. But I felt like I was mad at him and it wasn't his fault. I knew it was displaced, but I needed to be mad. Why do I tell you this? Well, I thought this was a great strategy, a great new strategy for the company. And in fact, it turned out to be an anti strategy. And I have never launched it. I have no plans to launch it now that I've really given it some thought and looked at the business and where it would fit and where it doesn't fit. And I feel like I dodged a bullet. But let me tell you, there's some other anti strategies that we're going to talk about today that I have moved forward with and have actually done, and it's cost me a lot of money. So the question is, could your business growth be slowing down not because of a lack of strategy, but because of an anti strategy? Many of you have DMed me. Many of you are my students. You might be in one of my milli clubs or my mastermind or digital course academy, and you have told me that your business has slowed down. Not all of you. Many of you are thriving. And you've told me about your biggest launches and I don't want to be doom and gloom because it's not true, but I have a lot of students and you all are so open with what's working and not working in your business. And some of you have said, this ain't working for me. And so what if it's not your strategy but your anti strategy? So let's talk about it. What the heck is an anti strategy? Well, essentially it is a lack of alignment where decisions are made in silos instead of in service of the big picture. So decisions are made in silos. Don't forget that part. I'll come back to it. But why this matters, why I wanted to do this episode with you. Well, when you're not intentional, these sneaky anti strategies can really stall your progress and cost you time and a lot of money. Ooh, my anti strategies have cost me a lot of money. So I thought before we get into really looking at how to identify an anti strategy and also what to do about it when you find one. Before we get into all of that, I wanted to take you behind the scenes. I already told you about my coaching program, but, oh, don't you worry. I have more anti strategies that I've identified. It was funny because when I was preparing for this episode, I went in Slack and I went to my leadership team and I was like, can you guys think of one more anti strategy? And I explained what it was and I said, you know, the coaching program, but is there one more? They came back with like five or six. And I remember thinking, thanks, guys. Thanks for rubbing it in my face that we've done this more than once. I never knew this term anti strategy until I started to research and really putting this episode together. I knew the direction I wanted to go. I just didn't realize it was going to turn out the way it has. And I'm very excited about it because I'm going to learn from this as well. But basically, clarity on spotting anti strategies, steps to pivot them into effective strategies and ways to get your team on the same page. That's what this episode is all about. But like I said, I promised you with Amy Porterfield show, I'm taking you behind the scenes even more than I feel comfortable with. I've noticed that a lot of stuff I've been sharing, I want to preface it with I don't want to tell you this. I don't want you to know this because I get concerned that you'll think, is this really the person I want to be my mentor? Is this really my guide when she's making all these mistakes? And they're very specific. I'm going to tell you them right now. So I know that that's not necessarily what you think, but my. The part of me that's insecure starts to be like, should I really tell them all of this? I know I should because we all know that business is not up, up, up, up, up. And it's a lot of up and down, up and down, down, down, down, up, up, up, down, down, up, up, down. That was weird. But that's really what it is. So with that, let me share some more anti strategies so you can start thinking of where they might be in your business as well. Okay. The first one is CRM migration gone very wrong. So we moved from Infusionsoft to HubSpot over a year ago, and essentially the marketing team wasn't included in the initial migration. Now you might be thinking, what are you talking about? CRM belongs in marketing. Why wouldn't it have started there, managed there? And we're. When I'm talking about a migration, we're talking about. I think I've been on Infusionsoft for like 10 years. So we've got hundreds of lead magnets, thousands and thousands of subscribers. We've got funnels galore. All of our sales go through there. So, like, my entire business was in Infusionsoft and my entire business needs to move over to HubSpot. So we're talking a very, very big project that we literally hired an outside resource to help us do this. We couldn't even do it alone. But we started with Josh in customer experience. He was managing it. Why? Because one, we didn't have a lot of people on the team that had the bandwidth to take this over. And I didn't want to wait. I was impatient. And two, Josh is a really, really strong employee on my team. And the number one thing I love about that man is even if he doesn't know how to do something, he'll figure it out. And he will always raise his hand. I think that is the coolest thing about him. And so he will always raise his hand and say, well, I'll do it, I'll figure it out. And so he did that in one of the meetings. And we're like, okay, he's competent, he's always eager to dive in and we need to get this done. So he did exactly what we asked him to do. But what we all didn't realize is so many decisions needed to be made by marketing inside of marketing. So we were operating in a silo, making decisions without marketing, moving over all of our data and we realized in the middle, this is wrong. We're making wrong decisions. Marketing finally got involved. They're like, what are you all doing? Like, this isn't right. And it cost us so much money mid project. We had to shift our focus mid project. Time wasted, lots of money wasted. And we had to add more money to get this company that's helping us to stay on longer to figure it out. So anti strategy thinking we are going to put someone in the place, leave other people out, impatient just didn't work. Here's another one. Website refresh misalignment. Ooh, this one stings. So I have been wanting to rebrand my website for 5,000 years and it tends to never be a priority over some things that are more important. So we decided, okay, this is a few years ago, we're going to rebrand the website. This is happening. And so we hired someone that was very expensive and she took us through all of these exercises, got on many interviews with me, worked with my CMO at the time. Who was Chloe, who some of you know well because she was in my company for a long time. It was a full blown project and the whole time I hated it. I just, I didn't necessarily love her direction, but I'm like, she knows more than I do. I'm not really good at design or being super creative or seeing a vision like a website come together of a rebrand. So I kept saying, this woman knows more than I do. But her ideas just weren't fully in alignment with what I really wanted to do. But I was busy so I stayed out of it and just jumped in when she needed me. And Chloe was struggling because she's like, you need to be more involved. And I just wasn't because I didn't like the direction it was going. I didn't realize that at the time, but something didn't feel right. So I got busy doing something else. And we got to a point that Chloe's like, this isn't going to work. It's just not right. This isn't the right person we should be working with. And you're not in it because you don't like the direction we're going. So it's a full misalignment. And we stopped the rebrand. I bet we were a hundred thousand dollars in, but I knew if we keep going, we're just going to waste more and more money. The woman was incredibly talented. It has nothing to do with her. It was just a full misalignment. But the strategy was, let's rebrand. This is it, it's time. And then just like, quite honestly, I felt like the stars weren't aligned, which is a silly way to say I wasn't focused. Okay, one more. Almost retiring Momentum, my multi million dollar membership, but beyond the money, it is full of incredible Digital Course Academy students who finish Digital Course Academy and then they move into my back end membership, which is Momentum, where we are in the trenches with them, making sure they finish creating their courses, launch their course over and over again. It's only for Digital Course Academy students. It's incredibly successful, but also very engaged with these beautiful students. But it was hard to market because it still is kind of hard to market because it's backend. I can't talk about it on social. I can't sell it to the general audience. I have. I could only sell it to people that have gone through Digital Course Academy. And so it's. It's a tricky. I think backend memberships are tricky. So in my mind, I'm like, this strategy isn't working. I can't launch it like I launch everything else. It feels hard. So let's just retire it. This is a few years ago for Momentum members. Earmuffs, don't listen to this. And so we said, okay, we're going to retire it. I think I was burned out at the time and I just thought, yeah, this is the way to go. And then we got into conversations with Momentum members. We did a little survey before we fully took the leap. We started getting on calls and talking to Momentum members to see what the program meant to them. And it meant a lot and they were getting results. And then my fractional CFO ran some numbers and he's like, have y'all lost your mind? This is incredibly profitable and your students are happy. And so I can't really tell you all the reasons behind why I wanted to do that, except that it felt hard. And I just weeks ago did an episode about all or nothing. And if you listen to it, do you remember me saying that struggle doesn't mean a stop sign. It means that, okay, so we're going to have to pivot or look at this differently or approach it differently. But for momentum, it felt hard. It was a struggle. So I put up a stop sign and said, we shouldn't be doing this. Terrible strategy, Terrible. Luckily we saved it. We never move forward with it. And I would have really regretted it if today I told you I didn't have momentum. So you might be saying, amy, these are just mistakes. These are just mistakes that you've made. Yeah, you could say that. But they were strategies in my business at one point, they absolutely made sense. Starting out, I was really proud of these projects and they were strategic and I thought they were aligned and we were moving forward and then we weren't and then the problems happened. And the word misalignment is an important one for anti strategies. Often it's fully misaligned. So I want to take it back to you now. You've heard my stories, you understand what an anti strategy is and if not, it will come to life even more. But I want you to identify one today. So here's how I'm going to do it. First, let's talk about how you identify an anti strategy. Second, what do you do about it once you have identified it? So the first question I have for you is this. Are decisions being made without alignment to quarterly or annual goals? This is one of the easiest ways to know if a project you're working on a strategy, you can look at it as a project or some big initiatives. It doesn't have to be called a strategy, but you're working on it and it actually doesn't really truly tie to your quarterly goals that you set for this year or your annual goal. And I don't mean shove it and make it align like we can, we can spin a story around anything. But is it really, truly this thing you're working on now going to get you to your goal faster, more efficiently in a bigger way? Meaning if I do this, that goal I have, I'll make even more money because it's four fully aligned. So that's number one question. The decisions that are being made right now, the things that you're doing, are they fully aligned with the goals you set for this year? Number two, is there a lack of clarity on how this decision contributes to long term business growth? Is it something you're doing right now because you're freaked out that you're not hitting your revenue goals, so you just kind of threw in a new project? Is it something that you just. You're kind of terrible with loving to start things and not really loving to finish them. So it's kind of like a squirrel, like this will be fun or this is needed. Let's just throw this in. It was never part of the plan this year. My team hates when I throw in a big project that literally was never part of the plan this year and a new project that we're not looking at what everything else that we're doing. Of course they hate. Every team hates that. So is there a lack of clarity on how this decision or this thing you're doing contributes to long term, not just this year, but five years from now? Is this going to be where you want to go? Is this the vision for your business? Real quick, before we continue, I've got some exciting news. My live bootcamp subscribed is back and better than ever. Subscribe 2025 is focused on helping you attract your FIRST FIRST 100 email subscribers who will become your first online buyers. If you dream of quitting your 9 to 5, but you need proof that you can make money first. Subscribed will help you grow your email list so that you'll know exactly who you'll sell to when it's time to promote your offer. Now I do this with four easy to follow live trainings. A private community to ask questions and pitch and catch ideas. Accountability if you find yourself procrastination scrolling more often than you'd like to admit. All in a clear beginner friendly first this, then that kind of framework that you can easily follow inside the bootcamp over a week, all for just $37. Now I only offer this once a year so I want you to go to amyporterfield.com subscribed right now. Don't wait amyporterfield.com forward/subscribe and I'll see you inside. And finally, is your team working on projects or priorities that don't directly serve key business objections? So when you think of your core business, what you do, how you do it, are there some team members that are working on some projects or have priorities that really at the end of the day they don't serve? And this is when your team gets bigger. I can promise you this, when your team gets bigger, some people will take on priorities that they never should have. That you're like, why are you working on that? But things just got away. Or they were excited or eager, they wanted to show you what they could do. And all of a sudden they're working on things that you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is actually not going to serve the business in a big way. We need to redirect. Or maybe you, my friend, because a lot of you are listening, do not have teams yet. You work with contractors, but you don't have full time employees. That is a majority of a lot of people listening right now. And so it might not be your team members, but how about you? Did you get excited about something but didn't kind of run it through the channels to make sure you have the bandwidth, the right people, and it aligns with your goals and vision of the company? I think this happens and it's happened to me because I'm going too fast. I just, I'm impatient, I'm excited and I just want it done. And so we just go full steam ahead. Or I just haven't fully thought it out. And usually when you don't fully think something out, it just really comes back to being impatient. Like, raise your hand if you feel like you're an impatient leader. Did you know I have a YouTube channel so you can watch me Right now I am raising my hand. I think you knew I had a YouTube channel. I don't use it a lot, but did you know I'm recording all of these on video? You all know that how I feel about video. But hey, since I'm doing it, come on over and take a look because this is a lot of work anyway, raising my hand if you can't see me because yeah, I'm impatient and that typically leads to anti strategies. Okay, so let's talk about a more important topic than anything. How to shift an anti strategy into a growth strategy. So maybe you've already identified, ooh, that thing, that thing I'm working on right now, or one of the things probably not in alignment. Maybe you have, maybe you haven't. If you haven't, you will down the road. Like everyone, everyone does this at one point or another. So how do you identify an anti strategy and turn it into a growth strategy? Well, number one, you're going to reassess your big picture goals. So you want to ensure that your yearly and quarterly goals are clear and communicated because a lot of the times those goals might not be fully locked in. So you think, well, actually I didn't even realize they weren't aligned because I wasn't really going back to my yearly and quarterly Goals and looking at them and understanding them, they were a little vague or I never look at them, so I even forgot what they were sometimes it happens. And so let's go back like right now. If you ask me, Amy, what are the four company goals for 2025? I'm going to spare you, but I could rattle them off. Boom, boom, boom. And I, One, I don't have a lot of them. Two, we communicate them company wide. And three, all quarterly goals are determined by the yearly goal. So everything, you know, all roads lead to those yearly goals and they're very well known in my company. That hasn't always been the case. I used to not even have goals and then when I did, I only shared them with me, myself and I. So communicating them, putting them front and center. Even if you're a one woman or a one man show, you should be able to rattle off your goals. There shouldn't be too many and they should be like in your core, you know them well. So every decision you make, you always come back to, does this align with my yearly and quarterly goals? Number two, perform a strategy check in. So you want to review your ongoing initiatives and you're going to ask, is this in alignment? I'd love you to do that with everything you're working on right now. Is this in alignment? Not is it fun? Does it feel good? I want it to be fun, but it needs to be fun and in alignment. It needs to make sense for the business. And if you have a team member that is so bold to say this doesn't really make sense, please listen to them because they're not as close to it and in love with it as you are likely and they see something that maybe you don't. So I'd give your team full permission. Your contractors, if you do have employees, anytime something seems out of alignment, please bring it up. Give them permission to say, is this really in alignment? Because you might be too close to it. Number three. So I kind of jumped the gun is involve the right people early. So decision making should include input from those directly affected. One, if you include the right people early, they might say, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is totally getting us off track. Because another way to identify an anti strategy is if it's pulling you away from something that very clearly you're doing, needs to be done and will move the business forward. Because you know every yes means a no somewhere else. So if you're doing this strategy that turns out to be an anti strategy, I promise you're taking away from the stuff that really is going to move the needle that you really thought out and you were planning to do this year. So involving the decision makers earlier is so important now. This is something we've just started to do on the team. Every single big project starts with a kickoff. All the questions are asked. Nothing's really set in stone yet. But we're starting to talk about how to bring it together. These kickoff meetings, some someone is always allowed to say is this in alignment? And then if it is, great. But if it's not, we're going to talk about it and maybe squash it. So kickoff meetings really early on, not when you have everything figured out and then you're communicating it. I mean like initial idea. Kickoff meeting could help with this. Number four, use data over assumptions. So before making big pivots validate with actual performance metrics, if I sat down and really looked at the metrics of momentum and how very profitable and steady that income was, it's recurring revenue is the only recurring revenue I have in my business. I would have never even suggested did that we sunset it. Look at the data. You all know this. You're going to get so sick of me talking about it this year. Data into impact, it's a value of my company. No decision now is being made without looking at the data. And let me tell you my friend, I've made many decisions without looking at the data and I've regretted it. Not just momentum. Look at the data. And number five, communicate strategy across the team. So make sure that every role aligns with a bigger vision. So everyone on your team, you have to know how they connect with your end game, your yearly goals. So every single person should be contributing to those yearly goals. And if you have a project that is really not touching a lot of people, but it's a big project, it's likely in a silo. So the migration, that was a huge project. Expensive time wise, all of it, just huge. And basically Josh was working in a silo. Not his fault. But we didn't give him the players he needed. We didn't have the bandwidth. We shouldn't have even started it when we did. It wasn't the right timing. Impatience led to that. I put that on me. So look for silos as well. I think I should add that number six, do you have silos in the company right now where the right players are not being invited to the table? Okay, so finally I just want to talk about if you do have contractors or a small team, how do you talk to them about, you know, anti strategies and identifying them well, number one, I've already said it. Encourage your team to spot and call out misalignments. An anti strategy at the end of the day, I said this earlier, is a misalignment. So give your team permission to call it out. Also, foster a culture where it's okay to pause and pivot when something isn't working. I want to tell you a quick story. So we recently filled up the Millie Club, which is a group of 30 entrepreneurial women that are making about 500k and their goal is to have a million dollar year. So in a calendar year, they want to make a million dollars. And so the Millie Club has curriculum and coaching and community around how to get that done. And so I'm really excited about the Millie Club. It was the second cohort that I just filled up and on Thursday at 3:00. So remember, my team works a four day work week. We don't work on Friday and we are launching this on Monday morning with an email. And on Thursday around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, my CFO said, wait a second, why are we putting the price on the sales page? First of all, they have to fill out an application. And if someone sees that price and they don't really understand the program, they might not fill out the application, but they might be a perfect fit. And also I realized, wait a second, I should be doing the calls. My team was going to do the calls, but I really wanted to know and curate myself who is going to be in the group. But I've been really busy. I've been running around and I just didn't say, hold on, that doesn't feel right. But for some reason, Thursday at 3:00 in the afternoon, I got that gut instinct, like something's off. And then jaws, my CEO said, yeah, we shouldn't be doing the funnel is all wrong. But here's the wild thing. We had mapped out the entire funnel. Allison is my marketing director and she was on this call. I'm sure she's like, hello ladies. I literally showed you the whole funnel last week. Like she mapped it all out. We're like, huh, this is good. Yeah, we just didn't see it. We just didn't see it. And I really attribute that to we're just going too fast. Every time we make a mistake like that. I say, everyone slow down for a minute. Just slow down. So anyway, we said to Allison, we got the funnel wrong. She's like, I agree. Now that we're talking about it, I agree. I said, I need to be on Every single call, my team looked at me like, all the women on that call, they're like, what? Because I'll be a bottleneck if we don't figure out my schedule to get everyone on these calls. And. And then three, why are we putting a high ticket price on a sales page that they have to fill out an application first? Anyway, so we revamped the entire strategy, which essentially was we send an email, you read all about the program, you fill out an application. I review every application I choose, the people that I think are the perfect fit. I then send them an email saying, I've reviewed your application. I would love to get on a phone call with you. I give them a calendarly invite, they click it, they show up, I talk to them about the program, make sure they're a good fit. Then I send them an order form and they can enroll. So that wasn't that smooth a couple hours before when we got on the call. And so why I tell you this is that my team knows it's okay to pivot at any time. If we identify something, it is okay to pivot. It's not fun. It's frustrating. I'm sure Alison was very frustrated because she worked on this the most, but she kept a great attitude. And I told my team that was on that call, I said, this is a good thing. This is a good thing. And I have to tell you, Millie club is amazing. It's filled. The calls were seamless. I hardly even had to make many calls, meaning most of the women that got on a call with me, boom. It was a yes. They were a hell yes. I was a hell yes for them. Like, it ran smoothly. And now I know every single woman that is in the Millie Club. I selected them and I know it's the right group. That wouldn't have happened if I didn't have a culture of we can pivot at any time if it's necessary. So just wanted to share that with you. So glad I did. And it wasn't fun too. I was, I was frustrated, but it was the right move. And then finally. So we're still talking about how to talk to your team. Set up regular check ins to ensure alignment at every level. So I think we identified this problem because we were doing a check in earlier that day and just something fell off for a few of us. Check ins will identify. Wait a second. But make sure your team knows. Please speak up. Part of your job is to speak up. And I think that your team needs to hear that over and over again because many People just want to do a great job. I remember in my last corporate job I probably didn't speak up that much. I just wanted my bosses to love me and think I'm a go getter and I'm not a problem. But I'm sure they wish I was more strategic and spoke up. So speak up, my friends. Okay, let's wrap up. So anti strategies happen when decisions are made in a vacuum or made way too fast, but they can be corrected with clarity, alignment and strategic thinking. The action here is to take a look at your business today and ask yourself, where are the misalignments? Are there some anti strategies that I just never even thought of in that way, but they actually could be keeping us stuck, holding us back. Maybe they're just too heavy on the business right now. And my invitation to you is to share one of those anti strategies you've identified over on Instagram. Because here's the thing, I'm going to post about this episode when it comes out and I would love for you in the comments to say, amy, here's one I identified not for me, but for everybody else to say, oh wait, if that's an anti strategy for her, maybe I do have one. I actually can relate to that. Let's help each other because again, we're too close to it and sometimes they feel invisible, like we can't not see them with the naked eye. But they are there. So sharing it, I think will help other people identify as well. One of my most favorite things about the Amy Porterfield show that's different from Online Marketing Made Easy is I love to do kind of a rapid fire takeaway and teaching points. So I'm going to do that really quick. I always work on these before I go live because I think this kind of allows you everything you just learned. Now it's like, let's take action. So first of all, anti strategies thrive in a strategic vacuum. Without clear business goals, people fill the gap with what they think is best, which can derail progress. So if it's in a vacuum, people are like, okay, I'm not exactly sure where we're going or what our goals are like. They're a little murky. So again, that part where they fill the gap with what they think think is best, we don't want that. We don't want anyone filling the gap. We want to be more strategic. Also, decisions made in isolation often create inefficiencies or decisions made in haste. Still, inefficiencies show up. So if a key stakeholder isn't looped in. Often mistakes are happening, costly mistakes happen. So make sure you have the right players from the get go. Also, reactivity is a symptom of an anti strategy. So if you find yourself constantly pivoting without direction, it's time to step back and reassess. So if you're constantly in reaction mode, you likely have some anti strategy gremlins in your business because constant pivoting is not right. You know how I said I want a culture that it's okay to pivot, but if it's happening all the time, something is very off. Also, a lack of alignment costs money. So just remember that if we're misplacing our energy or our excitement or we're moving too fast, we are costing ourselves a lot of money. I have a lot of money I wasted on these anti strategies I shared with you. I'd love to get that back. And then anti strategies don't just affect you, they affect your entire team. They often start with you though. I mean, let's be honest, if you do have some contractors, it's probably coming from you first and you're frustrating people and you don't want a big frustrated team, whether they're team members or contractors. Also, every decision should tie back to your core business goals. I think this is the most important one. But don't get creative and like get a little like, well, this is how I could tie it. No, it's clear, very clear. Remember how I said in episode five, the all or nothing episode, like, we have to let go of yes or no, good or bad. In this case, we're going to break that rule because it's clear. Does this align with the goal? Yes or no. That I think could be pretty black and white. And the fix to all of this strategy check ins is that simple. So you're going to regularly review your decisions. You're going to check in with yourself. If you're a one woman or a one man show, or if you have people on your team, check ins and encourage them to speak up. So to wrap up, here's what I want you to do. I want you to take just 10 minutes today. Maybe next, like if you go on a walk or you're on the treadmill or you're driving home or whatever. Take 10 minutes and review your business goals in your mind. Or if you can't remember them, that's a problem. We need to get to a place that you do, review your business goals and identify one thing that might be an anti strategy that you're working on. Maybe doesn't have to be, but identify something and ask yourself, is this in alignment with my big goals? Is this in full alignment with my big goals? That's the question I want you to ask. So there you have it my friend. I hope you found value in this episode and I hope that if you do identify an ANTI strategy, you remember that you're not alone. I just shared like five of them. You're welcome. There's my messy, messy business in terms of making decisions in haste and in silos and everything is figureoutable. To quote my dear friend Marie, you can figure this out. You can always course correct every single one of those ANTI strategies. They were painful and costly but I was able to bounce back so the earlier you catch them the the better. That's why I don't want you to wait to do this exercise. All right. I hope you have a fabulous day and I'll talk to you soon.