Jumpstart Your Business Success: How to use strategic planning to hit your goals without burning out - Chrissy Mellinger

Website: www.chrissymellinger.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrissymellinger-mba-businesscoach/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/chrissymellinger

00:00 Hello and welcome to this part of the June Jumpstart Summit i am so excited that you're here because we are talking all about how to jumpstart your business success, specifically how to use strategic planning to hit your goals without burning out or feeling like you don't know what you're doing next. So our goal in the next 50 minutes or so is to understand first what strategic planning really is because there are a lot of misconceptions out there, especially with small business owners.  

00:31 To work through the simple four phase framework so that you can walk away knowing exactly how to apply this process to your business. To not only jumpstart your business in June, but to jumpstart it anytime you feel like you just want a little extra cash, a little extra momentum or a little extra fun in your business. So before we get started, let me take one minute here and introduce myself. Hi, hello, my name is Chrissy Mallinger.  

00:59 I am a business consultant based on the East Coast in the United States, specializing in helping holistic health providers, energy workers, and mission driven service providers streamline their businesses and enjoy far more of their lives. What I'm about to walk through today has come from 7 years of working with really, really large hotels across the US and Mexico and then taking all of that corporate knowledge and reworking it for small business owners, nonprofits and solopreneurs. So let's get into it. What do you think when you hear the phrase strategic planning? A lot of people think that it's something that big business does, that it's a corporate thing.  

01:45 They don't really know what it is. So a lot of the common misconceptions business owners have is that, oh, it's not for me. I'm the only person in my business or I'm the only full time employee i have a really part time VA or I have a contractor who does this one thing for me. It's just me. I don't need to go through this whole process of strategic planning because it's me. I have everything in my brain. Or they think that strategic planning is simply choosing a revenue goal and working towards it.  

02:20 That's the second most common misconception I hear when I ask someone, oh, have you done your strategic planning for this year what's your strategic plan for next year? They say, oh I want to make a hundred thousand dollars without giving me everything else that goes into it. So first let's dispel that. These things are not what strategic planning is strategic planning is not something that is exclusive to big business it is not something that is just about plucking a number out of the air and saying I want to make X amount of money. Strategic planning is really about setting that long term destination. Where are you going not only in your business but in your life? What is that thing that you are building out what is your vision? And it's building out specific goals and pathways to get there, defining which resources you're going to need along the way, and creating the very specific action plans that you are then going to implement.  

03:30 So when it comes to strategic planning, it's a really simple four phase framework. Phase one is integrated visioning. That's where you are going to get all of your creative juices going. You're going to tap into your heart, into your soul, into your purpose, into the thing that you want to create in this world and get clear on it. Get really clear and detailed on what your vision for your life and your business looks like. Getting really clear on how your life supports your business, how your business supports your life, and how the two of them work together.  

04:13 Because if you only focus on one or the other, or you try and keep your personal and your professional life separate, you will inevitably burn out. It might not happen for a couple of months or a couple of years, but if your vision does not integrate your personal and your professional endeavors it is not sustainable. So when it comes to integrated visioning, I like to have three different goals. One goal, and this is we're specifically looking at the business side here, one goal is going to be a revenue and profit goal.  

04:52 So not just stopping at that top line, I want to make a hundred thousand dollars this year, but also then going the next step beyond and saying my profit goal is eighty thousand dollars. Because regardless of your business, you have to pay taxes you probably have to pay for your email service provider and Canvas, Zoom, all the different things. So goal number one is to make sure that you have a revenue and a profit number identified.  

05:24 Having this is really helpful to drive you towards something tangible. So regardless of whether your business goal is to replace a full time income, to create hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, or to simply pay for one family expense a month. It doesn't matter what the revenue goal is that you have or how big or small you want your business to be. It is always helpful to have a tangible number that you are working towards because it will help you make decisions. The second type of goal that I want you to set is a lifestyle goal.  

06:05 So what kind of lifestyle do you want to have that your business supports? A really common example of this is going to be working X number of hours a week, or X number of hours a day, or having certain times of the year off. So maybe you only want to work 3 hours a day, five days a week. Great, that's a lifestyle goal. Maybe you only want to work while your kids are at school. Maybe you want to have summers off, or have three two week long vacations throughout the year. That's an example of a lifestyle goal.  

06:41 And then the third one I want you to set is a milestone goal. Now a milestone goal is going to be something that supports either the revenue and profit goal or the lifestyle goal. So a milestone goal for revenue and profit might look like I want to have 5 clients booked at all times or I want to have 10 sales conversations every single week.  

07:06 It's a goal that's driving towards that revenue. An example of a milestone goal that supports your lifestyle might be I have the goal of hiring on my next team member so that I can focus only on my zone of genius instead of this specific task. Or it could be I want to hire on my next team member so that instead of working 50 hours a week, I'm working 30 hours a week.  

07:32 So that's phase one is getting really detailed using all of your senses how does it look, feel, taste, smell, etcetera when that vision exists. So getting detailed, super detailed here while also being as expansive as possible and thinking about the vision for your life. Now, the reason that this is so important is because when you have a clear vision for the thing that you were creating, it acts as blinders. If you've ever seen horses race, they wear blinders on their eyes so that they're not getting distracted by things that are happening outside of directly what's in front of them, so that they're only focused on the thing in front of them.  

08:18 That's what having a clearly identified vision does for you. It helps you not get distracted by the trends or the fads or what other people are doing or come the comparison game.  

08:32 It really helps you to stay focused on the vision that you're creating so that you can make smarter, quicker decisions. Phase two of the strategic planning framework is a current state snapshot of your business. This is where you are going to get into all of the details, all of the data, all of the metrics, every piece of analytics available to you to identify exactly what is happening in your business. So first things, you're going to spend about 45 seconds taking a snapshot of where you are in relation to your goals. So that revenue, profit, lifestyle and milestone goal that you just set for yourself, you're going to take a snapshot of where you stand in comparison to those right now.  

09:22 Where's your revenue and profit? Where are you at in terms of lifestyle and then where are you at in milestone? That's going to give you a really quick snapshot so that you can see quickly how much distance there is between where you are today and where you want to go. And then the second part of taking a current state snapshot of your business is to run a SWOT analysis for yourself as the business owner and for your business as a separate entity.  

09:53 Now a SWOT analysis is simply running through the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. So strengths and weaknesses, we all know what those are. Your opportunities are going to be opportunities for creativity, for expansion, for collaboration, for just ideation, brainstorming, expansion. And then the threats. When it comes to looking at a SWOT analysis of your business, the threats are often going to hit three different buckets.  

10:28 They can be economic in nature. If you are in a recession or you are experiencing tariffs or anything like that in your business or that affects your business, your clients, that's a great example of something economic. It could also be legislative. So if laws are changing around your credentialing or the licensing or even your industry as a whole, that could be another. And then technological. So we're living through a very interesting time in May 2025 with the huge advancement of AI.  

11:02 So whether you use AI or not, whether you like it or not, you have to take a look at how it is affecting your business and your clients. So you're going to run through this SWOT analysis for your business, looking at all of the data, all of the metrics, all of the analytics that you have, digging into the details here, really looking at everything from your email open rates to your click through rates to how many people are replying to keywords. And then doing that same level of detail across everything that you have in your business. And then you're also going to do a SWOT analysis for yourself as a business owner because you are your business's biggest resource.  

11:47 So what are your strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities? And then when it comes to threats in relation to you as the business owner, I really like to think of them as obstacles. And those obstacles might be really happy things. It might be that you were going on a two week vacation in a couple of months. That is a disruption to your general status quo so that is an obstacle to your business and to yourself because you may be a little bit more stressed before you go on vacation and you might feel a little bit less motivated when you come back from vacation. So you really want to spend as much time as is necessary here.  

12:26 Do not shortchange this because if you shortchange and rely just on your emotional perception of how well or how poorly things are going in your business, you're not going to be able to make objective decisions moving forward. So that's phase two of this framework. So first you've got to set the vision of where are you going. Then you've got to identify where exactly as detailed as can be or you starting from. And then phase 3 is creating the road map to get you from today to the vision that you have. And you're going to create the road map across three different categories of business. You're going to create the road map in terms of revenue.  

13:14 How are you making money in your business? You're going to create a road map for marketing. How are you communicating about your business? And then you're going to create a road map for your operations or how are you running the business what are the resources that you have or that you need to hit your revenue and marketing road maps. So you're going to create the plan. And when you create the plan, that's going to identify exactly what you should be focused on when so that you never get lost in confusion of, oh, I don't know, what am I actually supposed to be working on right now? You get to actually continue to move forward every day because you've already done this structurally foundational work.  

14:04 And then finally, phase 4 is implementation. It is not enough to jump start your business by just creating the plan that looks beautiful in your planner or on a Google Drive document. It's really about going out, taking action, progress over perfection, doing the thing and seeing what happens. So it's not just doing the thing, it's doing it and collecting data to always adjust and refine to see what you have as you go along. So when it comes to phase three, because this is the stickiest part for most entrepreneurs is creating the how. How are you going to get from today to that big vision that you created? Like I said, you're going to create road maps in three different categories, revenue, marketing and operations.  

15:04 I want to break those down for just a moment. When you're looking at the road map for revenue, what many entrepreneurs make the mistake of is looking only at the thing that they are selling. Whether you are selling one thing and one thing only or you are selling 15 different products, instead of asking yourself what am I selling? A better question to ask yourself when it comes to creating a road map to having long term sustainable success without burning out, the better question is how do I make money? Because it's not just what you sell, but it's how do you make money? And there are three core drivers that I want you to have inside your revenue system so that you can more consistently and more reliably make money in your business.  

16:03 The first element here is going to be your core offer or offers. This is going to be the one to two things that you are primarily selling it's where the bulk of your marketing and your other resources are going to go. It is the thing that you are most commonly known for and the biggest driver of your revenue. Then I also want you to add in what I call stepping stone offers. So these are going to be upsell and downsell offers that create a more robust client journey, more touch points and opportunities for you to onboard clients faster and to give a higher level of service and to retain those clients longer.  

16:52 So really fleshing out your revenue suite so it's not just one thing that you're selling, but that you have multiple options that all make sense together. Not just throwing stuff out there because you can do it, but having really strategically designed stepping stone offers. The reason that you want this in your revenue system is because it gives your clients more options to on board with you faster with less risk. Most of your stepping stone offers are going to be priced at a lower point than your core offer.  

17:31 So it gives you more opportunities to onboard clients and it also reduces the risk for your clients to invest with you, which 2025 is a crazy economic cycle across most markets in the world. So the more risk that you can reduce for your clients, the more likely they're going to sign up with you. And then the third element of a revenue system that you should have is ancillary. It's kind of that miscellaneous other category and this is where it's really about how do you make money, not what are you selling.  

18:08 The two most common forms of ancillary revenue are going to be affiliate programs and referral partnerships. It can also include passive products, though I would be remiss if I did not have the disclaimer that there is not something that is truly 100 % passive it always includes some kind of work and setup and marketing. But when it comes to ancillary offers, this is more about how do you make money that does not require you to be highly involved in the delivery of the good or the product or the service. So to quickly recap, when it comes to creating a road map for your revenue, you really want to ask yourself, how do I make money in my business and have that work through three core elements number one is a core offer or core offers going to cap that at two or three at the Max number two is stepping stone offers that are strategically created with your client in mind, and then number three is going to be this ancillary or other revenue streams.  

19:21 Then when it gets into your marketing road map, the thing that I really want you to remember here is marketing is not about being everywhere all the time and burning out. Having a really clean marketing system that is going to convert your people from subscribers, followers, fans into paying clients and customers. That marketing system requires A refined strategy that relies on complementary channels that target your cold, warm and hot audiences. Through a combination of building, borrowing, and buying, all on platforms and channels that you personally enjoy that allow you to shine. So it's not just about doing what is popular or what's trending or what some big expert told you it's going to work this year.  

20:29 It's about finding marketing channels that make sense for your vision and for your personality. So I'm going to break that down real quick. Marketing systems that convert and feel good, which really means you're not going to burn out. You're not going to have to worry about, quote unquote, being consistent because you're enjoying the process with a refined strategy you're going to focus on complementary channels, marketing channels that support one another, that work in tandem, not just repurposing across all the platforms, but really asking yourself which marketing channels are going to support one another.  

21:14 For example, this summit is a speaking opportunity, so that's the primary channel it's a speaking channel that is then putting you onto an email list. So it's speaking and email working together. You also want to make sure that when you're looking at your marketing system, that you are hitting your cold audience, people who don't know you, your warm audience, people who know you but maybe haven't invested very much with you, if at all. And your hot audience, those people who are like, Oh my gosh, Chrissy came out with something brand new, I need to buy it. So you want to make sure that your marketing hits on all three of those because when it does, you're going to get the visibility and you're going to have the conversion.  

22:08 So many business owners stop and stall their business success because they're only focused on visibility. They're only focused on that lead generation without building up the rest of the relationship through nurturing them through the rest of the journey. And then the last thing I want to add here is that when it comes to marketing, you really want to make sure that you have a combination of building, borrowing and buying audiences so that you can minimize your risk.  

22:39 We all know that building your own audience has a lot of great opportunity and it tends to be slower because it's completely reliant on you. Whereas when you borrow audiences, you are leveraging other people's networks. And then finally, when you buy them through advertising or some traditional PR, that can very quickly get you even more. But the best combination is all three. So those are the core elements of a marketing system that is going to help you convert and actually enjoy the process. So to recap, if you want to jump start your business success, whether it's June 2025 or it's anytime in the future, you really want to come back to the basics of strategic planning.  

23:34 You want to go back to that four phase framework that starts with integrated visioning, continues with a current state objective evaluation of where you stand in your Business Today, and then the creation of a detailed road map for your revenue, marketing and operations. And then finally closing out with implementation, going out and doing the thing now to help you get this done. You have access to a strategic planning Jumpstart workbook that is going to walk you through everything we talked about in today's training in a much more detail it's going to actually give you some journal prompts and reflective exercises to walk through that entire four phase framework, as well as the three core elements needed for your your revenue system and the strategy that you need for a marketing system.  

24:29 So your next step is to download that workbook and then to actually set aside 15 minutes today to start working on it. Look through the workbook, identify how much time you're going to need to get through each of the phases and the two systems, and then schedule that into your calendar. Don't wait on this. When you're done listening to this recording, go download it and spend 15 minutes figuring out how you're going to fit it into your life because this is not something that you just want to sit on again to jump start your success whether it's today or it's three months from now when you need just a little kick up the butt, this is something that you can come back to time and time again.  

25:20 Again, my name is Chrissy Mellinger it has been a pleasure speaking with you today and I wish you the absolute best with your strategic planning.