 Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Nick Brophy, your host and director of DAV Patriot Boot Camp. Welcome back to DAV Patriot Boot Camp. Caffeine Connect, a series designed to showcase the stories, expertise, and successes of veteran entrepreneurs while providing valuable knowledge and inspiration for aspiring business owners. Every time we host a DAV Patriot Boot Camp entrepreneurship event, whether this is online or in person, we reaffirm the most valued and worthwhile aspect of our program is undoubtedly mentorship. DAV and the founders we serve are blessed with a large network of business leaders who are willing to invest their time to contribute to the success of our entrepreneurs. Some do so as mentors, others as donors or sponsors, and yet there are those who engage through speaking roles and presentations such as this. And today, we re blessed with yet another valued partner willing to dedicate their time and expertise to help you, our DAV Patriot Boot Camp family as we say in the army, improve your foxhole. With that said, we imagine that you as a business owner are always thinking about the best strategy for your business. Have you ever asked yourself any of the following questions? How do I create and communicate my strategy? How can I work on my business rather than in my business? Am I ready to scale? Or when do I know that? Well, you re in luck. We ve invited Susan Malay from Malay Strategies to walk through the who, what, why, and how of strategy development in a segment we call Strategy Made Simple. Susan Malay, Founder and CEO of Malay Strategies is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. She served as an officer in the Air Force where she was an operations officer leading over 400 airmen and women. Later, she served as a speechwriter for the four-star general overseeing Air Force logistics before transitioning out of the military like we all do and starting her professional career. She went on to earn a master's in public policy from Harvard University, several certifications which include, and I hope I don t jump all these up, my CISSP certified information systems security professional, PMP, one of my favorites, project management professional, and CMA piece, Change Management Advanced Practitioner. Lastly, Susan earned a certificate in artificial intelligence from MIT s Sloan School of Management. Susan spent over a decade with large Fortune 500 technology and management consulting firm where she served as a strategy executive and held leadership roles across its government and commercial business lines as well as corporate headquarters. In those roles, she led corporate transformation initiatives across the global business and managed a diverse portfolio of multi-million dollar programs included in industries such as oil and gas, retail, cybersecurity, automotive, and of course, our government clients. As you can see, Susan s worn many hats and we re thrilled to have her here to teach us strategy made simple. So at this time, I d like to take a moment to introduce Susan Malay. Thank you, Nick. I appreciate the kind introduction and thank you for everything that you do and DAV does for veterans. I will go ahead and share my screen and then we ll jump right in. As Nick mentioned, we will talk about strategy made simple today and that is one of my passions, bringing a lot of the more complex concepts and trying to simplify them so that you can start implementing them in your business today. So as a brief overview, I ll walk through an introduction just a little bit more about my background. I always like to set the stage talking about communication and culture and some of the reasons why we want to have a strategy and it s so critical. And then we ll jump into the three W s plus how and I always like to end with a concrete example that make these concepts come to life and again how you can implement them today. So I d just ask you along the way to at least think of your questions, share them in the chat, share them via the live stream. We ll have an opportunity at the end to walk through and ideally you ll walk away with some nuggets that you can start implementing moving forward. So Nick, thank you again. You covered a lot of the background. Again, I m an Air Force veteran. I run Malay strategies as the founder and CEO. My first active duty assignment after graduating from the Air Force Academy was to attend Harvard to earn my Masters and then I PCS to Aviano, Italy where I was an operations officer for an F-16 unit. I had the opportunity to deploy to Iraq in 2007 during the surge. And then in 2008, I PCS again to write Patterson Air Force Base where I was the speech writer for the four star general who runs Air Force maintenance and logistics. So I pull a lot from that background along with my corporate experience in my business today. I separated in 2009. I joined a large technology and management consulting firm. My time there had kind of three main arcs. I first worked in analytics serving government clients, then shifted to the commercial strategy team, working again across oil and gas and automotive and retail. And then finally internally for corporate transformation initiatives. My focus today is helping small and medium sized businesses, mostly in the technology and professional services industries, scale and grow. But I would say that a lot of the concepts that we're talking through today, you can apply if you're still in uniform, if you're thinking about starting your own small business or if you're at a pivot point where you want to grow that small business to the next level. Largely, I work with leaders who want an articulated strategy. They want to work on their business instead of in their business. And again, they want to scale and grow. So before we even jump in to a lot of the three Ws plus how content, I like to set the stage for just what I see writ large with respect to running a business as a small business owner, working with a lot of other small business owners and ones who are looking to get to that medium sized range. I see three main pain points. The first is finding time. The second is focus. And the third is follow through. And I try to weave a lot of the solutions that are created to help address some of these pain points. So I love running a small business. Running one is awesome. It's also hard. And it's a lot of hard work. And I recognize that it's easy to get bogged down in daily operations versus taking a moment stepping back and looking at the big picture. So a lot of the work that I do with clients is focused on that carving out that time, thinking about the future that you want to create, and then creating the plan to help you get there. The second is focus. So there's a lot to do across running a business. There's operations, there's client delivery, there's technology, HR, sales, marketing, et cetera. And so defining and sequencing your priorities within each one of those areas is absolutely critical to success. And then the third area of follow through, this is implementation. And this is where the rubber meets the road. We often find that the best laid plans can fall victim to the fire drill of the day. So what are we doing on a daily basis to move towards the goals that we set and the vision that we want to have for the future? I'm a firm believer that strategy and the essence of it is saying no. So when we have a strategic no, that opens the possibility of yes. And I think that this can apply both personally and professionally. So on a personal level for this past year, I said, no, I will not serve on the PTA this year, but yes, I will lead a Girl Scout troop. And that enabled me to have the time to manage my volunteer activities and to really focus and commit to the ones that I said that I would lead. From a professional perspective, I don't try to serve everyone. There's many strategy advisories out there. I focus on small and medium sized businesses, again, largely in the technology and professional services space that are looking to scale and grow. So I found that this strategic no, it opens the possibility of yes, but it also enables us to focus on what matters most. So I would just challenge you throughout this discussion to think about what that might look like for your business. Again, whether you're in business, you're thinking of starting one, you're thinking about getting to the next level. What is that strategic no that can propel your business, but also more importantly, what excites you about the possibility of yes. This next area has to do with culture, and you may have heard previously culture eats strategy for breakfast. So before we even said about how we're going to create our strategy, I find it's really important to address just how important culture is to successful implementation. And over the years, I found that there are three main areas that are absolutely essential for a strategy to be implemented successfully. And the first is leadership. So that's recognizing that we need a strong leader to champion the initiative. And if you're a solopreneur, which means you're in business for yourself, you're going to fill all of these roles. But if you are a leader of a small team or a larger team, it's understanding that you want to create that vision of the future and then empower that second team of leaders who can cascade that message throughout the organization or across the business. The second area, and we'll get into this a little bit more with the three WS plus how are the right stakeholders with diverse perspectives included throughout the process. So when we think about strategy creation, are we looking at it from a top down perspective, or a bottom up perspective, what kind of stakeholders will we include in the process? How will we get their feedback so that they feel a sense of ownership throughout implementation that something that's been created, they're a part of and they can see themselves within this future. And then the last area largely drawing from my experience as a speechwriter and just recognizing that strategy and communications go hand in hand is that clear, concise and consistent communication throughout the process is absolutely essential. Now for the second area, for a strategy to stick, it really needs to anchor within the business. So this is looking at, do you have the right people, the processes and the technology to implement the strategy? Are you in a position where additional training is needed or you need to look for a new hire? Do you need to implement a new technology? We'll talk through some of these concrete examples when we go through the exercise towards the end, but something that's think through as we look towards implementing the vision again, the future that you would like to create. And then this last part, you know, it's really what gets measured gets done. So we recognize that for a strategy to be successfully implemented, we need to manage, measure and mature it. And largely this will revolve around visual management. So this is some kind of dashboard that can align leadership to say, are we aligned around our goals and priorities and how are we moving towards that goal? It doesn't have to be a complex dashboard. It can be something towards the end of a red, yellow, green stoplight. We'll get into a little more detail there in the subsequent slides. But again, how are we in a very clear, concise and consistent manner communicating what we need to do and then measuring against that? Now we have the last area of storytelling. And again, I hope towards the end of this discussion today, you'll see where storytelling can really bring strategy to life. You know, many times people only begin to hear us when we say something three times, some say seven. So it's how are we determining what we want to say it, and then consistently conveying that message. And I found that this is particularly critical as businesses are looking to scale and grow. So this can be anything from communicating within your team at a team offsite, it can be presenting at a conference, it could even be talking to a potential investor. Maybe you have some initial seed funding, you're looking to get to series A, how can you tell your story about what your strategy is and the future that you want to create to get other people aligned and to help bring them on board. So essentially, this last element is painting a vision of your future with words and oftentimes graphics can help as well. But creating an environment where your team can see themselves in this future, and that you can use the power of story to drive impact. And the quote on the bottom makes me chuckle a little bit because I think, you know, again, this can be personally and professionally, but the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it's actually occurred. And I think this comes back to the fact that many times it takes three, six, seven times for us to communicate a message for it to be heard by a particular audience. So hopefully this again helps set the stage for just a lot of the different elements and variables with respect to strategy, culture, communications, etc. So now we're going to dig into the three Ws plus how. So the first W is the why. Why do we want a strategy in the first place? Well, over 50% of new businesses fail within the first five years. And so that number only increases over time. But aside from that fact, even taking a step back and thinking about it through the lens of an athlete, would you run a marathon without a training plan? And I like to use this example, because most people would say no, in some cases, some may. But I would submit that that largely if you do, it might result in injury or unmet goals or expectations. So what I've seen over the years is that when businesses periodically review the strategy, and that's looking at the strategy creation, reviewing it quarterly, coming back annually, that it will help drive revenue, everyone is aligned towards the same goals, they're working towards the same end. And it's going to help really solidify the clarity and the focus that's needed around what those priorities are. We talked briefly about engaging the team. And so I think how you incorporate and include your team throughout the process is really going to help them buy into the strategy and want to implement it. Ideally, it will excite them, it will motivate them towards a larger goal to being part of something bigger than themselves as they work towards implementing the strategy. And then last but not least, it lays the foundation for continued success. The second W is the who. So again, this gets to are the right voices, are the right stakeholders included in the process. And so I've worked in many circumstances where it is a top down strategy. The leadership is driving what the strategy will be and the organization is implementing it. But I've also worked in interest instances where it's a bottom up strategy. So there is a lot of feedback and input from the staff and from the very stakeholders to make sure that whatever plan is created has buy in across the team, and it's able to be implemented and executed accordingly. So as you look at this, this is not an exhaustive set of stakeholders, but it's one way to think about it from an internal and external perspective. So internally, do you have a board? Again, you might be that small tech company who's looking to go from C to series A, you have a potential board who is supporting you, you want their strategic advice and guidance, you can be a nonprofit, you have a board that wants to set that strategic vision, you want input early and often. If you don't have a board, it's looking at the leadership. So again, you've got the founder, the CEO, your leadership team who's helping to drive what those priorities are, thinking through how will you get that input from your staff. So if you have a small business with four or 10 employees, that's going to be a lot easier than if you have 500, 5000 or 50,000 employees. But there are ways to get that feedback. Are you sending a survey? Are you holding a focus group? Are you having change champions within the organization gather that feedback, collate it and then synthesize that feedback, rolling it up the organization? So again, there's lots of different ways to approach it. And it really just depends on the size of the business and the disposition of the leadership of whether they want it to be top down or bottom up. And then externally, it's looking at competitors. So who else is in the market? What are they doing? And how is your strategy different? And when we talk about implementation and the North Star, we'll talk a little bit more about how you can shape your go to market plan and what your unique value proposition is. The second area externally are your customers or your clients. So as you're developing your strategy, is there a way to get feedback? Is there a way to test the products or the services that you're offering to see if it's resonating with the market, if there are changes, if there's a way to upsell or downsell and incorporate that feedback in your strategy? And then of course, the last is the market analysis. So taking a look at what the kind of economic outlook is going to be clearly a couple of years ago, we didn't anticipate we would have a global pandemic, how did that affect the market and kind of the buyer disposition. So taking all of these things into account, recognizing that they can impact your strategy. Then on the bottom, there might be some other ways that revenue is coming into your organization. It could be through foundations or donors or government or others. So again, looking at broad brush of who the potential stakeholders might be and if and how you want to incorporate them in the process. And usually earlier is better again, so there's that sense of buy-in and ownership throughout implementation. The third W is the what. And I like to emphasize that there is no perfect way to develop a strategy that it's very important to norm on consistent terminology because some might throw around a priority or a goal or an action or an objective. And if we're not speaking the same language, it can get confusing. Fundamentally, strategy focuses again on that future that you want to create and your plan to get there. And I find that the strategy pyramid is quite helpful because it's simple and it's straightforward and it's logical. So starting at the 50,000 foot level, we have our vision. This is the future that you intend to create. Many times I'll walk through exercises with clients where we envision that future. When we think about five or 10 years or 20 years down the road, what is success? What does success look like for them? And that can differ whether you want to create a lifestyle business and usually that's centered around the individual who founds the business. It's a longer term business that kind of stays maybe within the family, etc. Or if you want to growth business within the next five years you want to be acquired, those are going to be different futures and you're going to have different timelines. So thinking through again about what that long-term vision looks like and what you intend to create. The second area is the mission and this is what you do. So I think coming from a military background, we're very familiar with the mission. In the business world it's just translating that into what are the products and the services and what's the ultimate outcome that my business wants to provide. I found here many times working with teams, we can do an exercise where we say what are the top three to five words that come to mind for what we do and what we want to accomplish and then we can bring everyone's feedback together. We use a mechanism called affinity mapping so we can group like ideas. They may not have the same exact terminology but we can say well there's a theme around this. We see several themes emerging and these are the themes or the priorities that we want to focus on within our business. The next area is values. So this is what you believe in. So for my business I pull forward my Air Force Core values, integrity first, service before self, excellence in all we do and it's my goal to bring that to all of the professional work that I do and just to create that client experience. The next are priorities. So this is your focus over the near term. So I often get the question what is the near term and I answer well that depends. What is your vision? What is your future that you want to create? Again do you want to be acquired in five years or do you want to run a family business that you can hand down in 20 years? If it's the former your near term might be 18 to 24 months. If it's the latter your near term might be a five year timeline. So these are some of the conversations that can help pull out what those priorities will be and over what specific timeframe. And once those priorities are determined then we determine the goals. Many times I will group priorities around products and services, marketing communications, business development, operations, finance, etc. Those are not the only way to frame priorities. I find that they're discreet and they're easily understood and easily communicated but for each one of those it's figuring out what are the associated goals and again we want to have these be time bound goals, specific goals. You may have heard the smart acronym where essentially we can say you know we just want to say I want to do x maybe I want to do x by the end of 2023. So you have set a timeline for when you want to accomplish something. And when you make them that specific it makes your metrics a lot easier to craft. So how do I know whether I've achieved those goals? Well if they're very clear then I will know if I'm working towards them or if I'm halfway through them because I've defined them clearly up front and we'll talk about it a little bit more when we get to the specific implementation example but our metrics can be qualitative or quantitative. So again it can be red, yellow, green, it can be I haven't started something I'm in work, I am complete or it can be you know I want to form three relationships from a business development perspective and I've formed one and that's red and two is yellow and three is green. So there's a lot of flexibility there but really the goal is to create something that's useful so that you have a dashboard that your leadership team can align around and this doesn't have to be complex and it doesn't have to be long. In fact I think the more simple it is and the more straightforward the more powerful it is. And then this last area is around actions and these are the specific steps to achieve the goals. So these actions would be what do I have to do in the next 90 days and then reassessing at the end of that quarter what do I have to do in the next 90 days. So much can change in just a 90 day period so I find planning any further out from that from a specific kind of tactical perspective can be kind of tricky just because many things can get changed they can get pushed. Plus when you're looking at it on a quarterly basis and you have more people buying into it kind of on a whether it's bi-weekly or quarterly basis you have the opportunity to kind of shift as you move along because the strategy you don't just set it up front and then never come back and revise it you test it you test your hypothesis you see if it's working and then you adjust accordingly. And I like to highlight the Michael Porter quote from Harvard Business School that the essence of strategy is choosing not what not to do and again this goes back to that strategic no. What are we going to say no to so that we can say yes to something else? So this brings us to how and this is where I have put together the strategy made simple method. So essentially this is how to implement your strategy from creation through implementation and we'll walk through each one of these in more detail but it all starts with the North Star. Again it's defining success what does success look like for you growing and selling holding on for a while maybe just the side hustle what is the business for you what do you want it to be and then establishing those near and long-term targets. Once you have those in place you can look at your go-to-market plan so that's everything from the problem that you solve your differentiator what your products and services are and what sets you apart. It's always important to look at what some potential obstacles might be but again we'll go into some more detail around that as well. So once that North Star is set we take a look at the near-term strategy. So this is reaffirming the firm foundation and the firm foundation is essentially your vision your mission and your values because you carry that across everything from strategy development through implementation. So this portion of strategy is defining and sequencing your priorities and goals then we get one step more granular as we go to the one-year plan in the 90-day roadmap and this is going to be updated every 90 days you have your one-year plan for the year but then you have your 90-day roadmap that you're going to look at quarterly you have your action sequence by quarters there's clear accountability and there's clear rules and responsibilities within the team. We already talked about it briefly from a metrics perspective but having a dashboard some kind of visual tool to manage measure and mature your strategy and then from an implementation perspective it's embedding strategy into operations to drive impact and I find that this is one of the most critical areas because you can create the strategy and it can sit on your shelf it can not be accessed on your computer and I would submit that your business doesn't actually have a strategy you have some ideas but it hasn't been tested and that it's something that you need to engage with and mature and adjust and learn from over time. So we will shift into a concrete example. I like to use the example of a lemonade stand because I find it's one that many can relate to and especially as we are here in Falls Church Virginia on a very hot summer day I think that a cold glass of ice lemonade can resonate with a lot of folks. If you consider maybe an 11-year-old or a 12-year-old who's setting up a lemonade stand maybe working towards money for college will run through what does it look like how can we break down the operations and the strategy of that lemonade stand through the lens of the strategy made simple method. So we can have a little bit of fun you can see the icons have shifted but again it's the same five essential elements your north star your strategy your roadmap your dashboard and then implementation. So taking the first part of the north star this is the firm foundation again the vision is the future that you want to create so if I'm setting up a lemonade stand on my lawn I don't just want to sell lemonade I want to create community I want my neighbors to come over I want us to interact I want us to talk and catch up and share what our summer plans are so my vision is to create community one sip at a time but what do I actually do well my mission is quenching thirst and fueling happy hearts so I'm actually providing a product that is meeting a need in the market and as a result I'm creating again the goodwill in the community that's helping me work towards my vision when we look at our values it's service again we're providing the service of the lemonade stand in our community and we want to do it with kindness we want to do it with honesty and we want to have fresh ingredients and that will play into our go-to-market plan so the next part is your go-to-market plan which always starts with the problem that you solve in this case it's quenching thirst and building community and this will come through as a thread throughout the strategy made simple method because I think in many cases businesses will say I have an incredible product or I have an incredible service and everyone's going to want it without really taking a step back to say is there a need in the market for what I offer so keeping that top of mind puts the customer or the client first as you go to offer your services the second area is the target market and the ideal client so again we're doing this on the front lawn we have thirsty neighbors on a hot summer day so this is local ideally they brought their change and they can come and purchase but really the ideal client would be the neighbor who just mowed the lawn who's extremely thirsty or just finished a run and we recognize that if they haven't brought their change purse with them that they can come back we know where they live we've created some goodwill and we can help meet their need through the ice cold lemonade now when we think about what are we actually going to sell at the lemonade stand we're going to sell lemonade but are we going to sell cookies are we going to sell sandwiches well I would submit that having a strategic no especially upon a new business launch is extremely important so you'll see down here the strategic no is no cookies and we're off on Sundays we'll be operating October through the summer months and off October through March when we look at our differentiators this is what sets us apart from every other lemonade stand out there while we use organic lemons one might say we source them from Sicily we have the freshest lemonade in town so that starts to create a referral basis for when people enjoy our lemonade that they will share with other neighbors who will hopefully drive new business to our lemonade stand additionally we're local and we're convenient and we're kind and so one of the things that I like to do in working with clients for differentiators is something called the fubo analysis so that's first unique best only what are you the first to provide what do you provide in a unique way it doesn't mean that you're the only one out there who provides lemonade but maybe it's the fact that you do it with kindness or you're doing it with lemons sourced from Sicily so figuring out again what sets you apart what are you the best out and again this could be the way that you deliver it not necessarily the specific item that you deliver and then the oh is the only what are you the only one out there delivering and when you look at some of those that can help you think about what the unique value proposition is for your business and what sets you apart the next area is your long-term stretch your near-term horizon and your near-term priorities and i've touched on this a little bit around well what is the long term well in this case if i'm 12 years old and i want to go to college and i'm raising money for that you know my long-term stretch is going to be five years because at the 10-year point ideally i've shut down the business or i've sold it or we've merged with the one down the street and again we're working in the five-year time horizon so for simplicity in numbers we're looking at a thousand dollars in revenue at 30 profit so what it really helps to do is say i'm looking in the future what is the target date so we're sitting here on July 6 2023 in five years it's 2028 and these are the numbers that i want to hit we do the same thing for the near-term horizon again August 31st 2025 i want to have 500 in revenue at 30 profit now there's nothing that says that it has to be two and five years but again we're looking at the long-term goal of the business what it's trying to achieve and those are within the realm if you want your near-term horizon to be 18 months it can be that but again we're just trying to get a general idea of kind of how this can be implemented in real life so i touched briefly on the priorities when we were looking at the strategy pyramid this is not the only way to bin priorities but i find that it's quite helpful because you can look at different elements of your business and kind of look at them from a kind of a vertical perspective so products and services we want standardize or eliminate formula so when we serve lemonade people recognize that it's consistent when i go to mcdonald's i'm going to get the same kind of chicken nuggets as if i go to another location so what is it going to take to standardize that formula so that anyone who's running the lemonade stand is using that same formula to drive consistency the second is marketing communications so again establishing a brand and having a marketing plan because if we go in business and nobody knows we're in business it's very hard to sell to that market so from a mcdonald's perspective if i see the golden arches i know that there's mcdonald's around the corner starbucks of course has a very noticeable brand as well so what brand do we want our lemonade stand to have and then how can we implement that through our marketing plan from a technology and infrastructure perspective we need to think about how we're going to accept payment is everything going to be a cash transaction do we want to have an online payment whether we're using venmo or zel what if someone shows up with their bitcoin are we going to be able to accept that so we need to think through that beforehand and if something comes up during operations that we haven't anticipated then we can adjust on the fly the next area is workforce and culture so who is going to man the stand i could do it full time but i would be exhausted and it's summer and i don't want to work all the time so i'm going to recruit friends maybe some family members to help me operate the lemonade stand and then i want to instill the kind of culture where i feel like everyone again is getting a consistent experience when they come and purchase our product or service now from a business development perspective we might form a partnership with a local bakery we said previously that our strategic no is that we're not going to sell cookies but maybe here we can sell our lemonade at the bakery who knows it's one of those things that we can look into for where we might be able to expand our market and then from a financial perspective it's thinking through how do i get the business started i need to increase my savings do i have some seed money maybe a loan from my parent who's an angel investor recognizing that it takes some initial investment to get the business up and running so now we think through potential obstacles so great we source our lemons from Sicily and then there's a supply chain issue so what happens when we don't have the main ingredient to create our product well we need to diversify our supplier base so when we think through some of our obstacles we can also look at potential solutions to overcome those obstacles ahead of time from a workforce perspective we could look at staffing shortages if we have recruited family and friends and they get sick and they can't work the lemonade stand then what happens are we going to shut down for a day are we going to try to see if there's some others that might be able to help fill those shortages but again thinking through that staffing plan and what that looks like and as always you know we talked about from the stakeholder holder analysis perspective looking at the competitors so if your arch enemy sets up her lemonade stand across the street how are we going to handle that you know over time are we going to look to merge are we going to stay kind of two dulings lemonade stands across the street we don't have to figure that out up front but again the north star is helping us think through a lot of these issues before they become a reality and then the last area is just reaffirming success so again we want to quench thirst create community this we can see this through referrals one neighbor tells another neighbor we feel the stronger relationships in our community people are actually waving to each other they're not just out on their phones passing each other on their driveways but they're actually how are you how's your summer going so you can start to see some of these other success indicators in addition to the numbers of yes i hit my one k in five years at 30 a profit now the strategy takes it to the next level again we're going to reaffirm our firm foundation we talked about this up front so i'm not going to go into too much detail here but we want to cascade this through every element of our strategy so that it's top of mine again we've got the date it's our two-year time horizon we know what our numbers are and we're reaffirming the problem that we solve so this is where we get to our goals so we mentioned in the strategy pyramid that under priorities are our goals so again this is not the only way to organize your priorities but this is one way to do it and now we're going to set goals for each of those priorities if you fleshed out your priorities and your north star and had some good thought behind it your goals will start to write themselves so i want to standardize and document my lemonade formula by august 2022 it's not going to likely be $20 but what's representative here is what do we think that this is going to cost we may not know this up front but if we're creating goals that are going to be six billion dollars they're not likely achievable in the time frame that we're setting so having some idea of the costs or the investment that would be required to achieve these goals is very helpful throughout the process i won't go through each one of the goals in detail but you know another good example is accepting online payments by may of 2024 so that means this summer will be a cash basis excuse me lemonade stand next summer maybe we'll get to the online payments maybe the summer after that we'll start accepting bitcoin you know from a an automation perspective maybe we want to invest in a juicer so everything is manual right now we're all doing the the squeezing of the lemons by hand but if we invest in a juicer you know that's going to be an initial upfront investment where we're going to be able to make more product down the line think another good example here is that loan from the parents you know maybe it takes a hundred dollars to get this off the ground we want that loan by july of 2023 so that we can start business this summer and if there are any specific questions here we can come back during the q and a period but i just want to make sure we get through everything in the next five or so minutes to leave time for questions then we talk about our roadmap so it's taking our near-term strategy which was the 2025 time frame again two years and looking at the one-year plan so by this day next year i want 250 dollars at 30 profit and i've translated those goals for my near-term strategy into my one-year goals so some of them will be a direct pull through i want to standardize and document my lemonade formula by 2023 i want to have my brand by the end of this year i really need three strong supplier relationships by april 2024 just in case i run into some supply chain issues and again i want to have those online payments um and then what i would call the lemonade stand way so we want a training program for any family and friends who are coming to run the lemonade stand likely we won't get that up and running this summer because we're still recruiting them but again this is starting to help with the consistency of the delivery of the product and the service and this is important particularly as businesses look to scale and grow so we now have our one-year plan and this is our 90-day action plan so right now again july 6 2023 by september 30th of 2023 i'd like to have made 75 dollars this summer at 30 percent profit and here's what needs to happen over the next 90 days we need that marketing plan again if we're in business then nobody knows no one can come and purchase our products or service maybe joe is going to take a look at payment options it could be an easy answer and we're going to say yes we're accepting venmo from the get-go or it might be something a little bit more in-depth pat's going to talk at the farmers market to look at are there other areas that we can source lemons and then lee is going to talk about forming a supplier relationship beyond those farmers market relationships some of those will have associated costs some of them may not but again it's a good idea to understand what are those investments over the next 90 days so that you can plan accordingly and then we always end with our firm foundation and the problem that we solve so that we are focused on that throughout implementation the second to last area is the dashboard so we've already seen this previously around our priorities and our goals this is just a pull-through from the strategy but now we actually create the metrics to measure how we are moving towards each of these goals so this is representative of a red yellow green stoplight chart that says okay for standard standardizing and documenting my lemonade formula I'm actually at a green well what does that mean it means that it's documented if it were yellow it would be in work so this is an example of a qualitative metric whereas these are quantitative metrics if I want to form three supplier relationships and I only have two then I'm currently yellow this will again manage measure and mature overtime ideally you have it on one slide for your strategy and you have it on one slide for your dashboard for simplicity and then the last area is implementation so this is where we get to people process and technology how are we embedding strategy into operations so from a process perspective it's having weekly meetings they are the same day same time same agenda they start and end on time so maybe every Saturday at 10 a.m. we huddle with our team and we say this is what we're looking to do for today here's how we did last week and iterate the strategy moving forward maybe the first Saturday of each month during lemonade season we're going to actually look at the dashboard we come together and we say we sold this many cups we had this request this is how we're going to incorporate feedback etc then at the end of the summer we say this is how we did over the summer and then maybe next spring before we hit the summer season we're going to look at that annual roadmap update now from a people perspective we want clear accountability you may have heard a Jim Collins book good to great he talks a lot about getting the right people on the bus so do you have the right people on the bus to help operate your business this is clearly defining roles and responsibilities is someone going to be a cashier is someone going to be pouring the cups and filling them with lemonade are the roles interchangeable they might be but incorporating that discussion up front is very critical the second area around people is customer experience are you getting feedback from the people that you serve what's working what's not how are you wrapping that feedback into your strategy moving forward and the same thing from a workforce and culture perspective what's working what's not maybe there's been issues with Venmo and it's causing frustration with the staff and so they're saying well we really want another payment method and you might have a happier staff that sticks around to help you operate your lemonade stand and then the last area is technology so do you have the right systems in place to deliver again we use the Venmo example but is it Zell is it cash do you have what you need is an electric juicer to make sure that you can drive operations from an automation perspective again the example of the electric juicer and then any type of late of the latest tech development so from an artificial intelligence perspective you know do you this is getting a little bit I would say more mature but do you have an algorithm that can take a look at the customer data that you've been serving to learn from past business are you learning from other business stands or excuse me lemonade stands so it's wrapping in that technology to improve your strategy and your implementation so I think that is 45 minutes exactly and we'll get to questions and contacts so you can find me on LinkedIn I have a website mollistrateg.com I write a weekly newsletter if you would like to learn more about this but Nick I will hand it back over to you and I would love to talk through some questions that people have yes I don't know if anyone can see me but I'm here and what an amazing presentation I personally love the lemonade stand example because I do have an 11 year old daughter and I've done the lemonade stand although we did find that cucumber water was really the hot seller in our neighborhood at least but what an awesome example what a great presentation I do have a couple of questions so we'll just jump right into some questions and before we begin with the questions if anyone is on the zoom at least if you want to if you want to present your question you're more than welcome to to turn your camera on or your sound on and you can do that but I do have a first question from Matthew that we'll throw out there and see what response we get and that is the howl slide is planned by time so what would it look like if the plan was milestone conditional and an example that he lists is when the prototype isn't testing then what comes next yes excellent question so I would say a lot of the examples in here are time bound but you want to make the strategy and the implementation work for your business so if you're working based off of prototypes then it would be very much milestone focused and if you have an idea of when you want to hit that milestone I would say kind of tying that to time would be a great idea but there's again no one perfect way to do it and it's making it work for you perfect okay so there's a whole plan about you know again the example makes this kind of brings us a life a lot I think you know you can talk about the strategy but that the the analysis that you did on the lemon and stand really brought this to life at least for me and I hope it did for our audience so we talked about the whole life cycle and then the dashboard resonates with me I love having those metrics in front of my face I think most people would but it takes time to put it together so what are some effective methods maybe rudimentary methods for measuring and evaluating the success if you don't have a dashboard or if you do have a dashboard what are some successful methods or some effective methods I would say just having one slide is effective I mean you can house your dashboard in many different ways you can do it in excel you can do it in a powerpoint there's no again no perfect way to do it I would just say pick one and use it for a specific period of time see what works see what doesn't work and then adjust accordingly I think the most important thing is to make it simple because I've been involved with things that are very complex and it just it loses people over time I think it's just hard to digest you know I liken it to you know when we're driving in our car and we look at the dashboard you know if every time the fuel gauge changed where it was on the dashboard I I think the wiring in my brain would just short circuit and so we want to be able to digest complex information easily and so having again that same time same place same format it gets people used to it because I may be looking at this every day but the team is likely not and so to orient them quickly it just helps to have it be consistent fit and agree more I think that's a term dashboard is a term that might scare some people because it implies an analyzing and again putting things in a standard practice which can be very difficult especially in the beginning when you're so busy you know creating everything that that revolves around your business and I would just highlight there you know you don't have to have a dashboard before you launch your business it's really I would say start with the north star think about what is that future you want to create what do you want to do what sets you apart how are you going to deliver it alone or with a team how are you going to communicate it and then over time I mean a lot of this is for businesses that have multiple team members they're looking to scale and grow if you're a solo per newer a lot of this is in your head just get it down on paper in a pager to and that can help orient you over time great how can you know you talked a lot about technologies and I know again this was a rudimentary example that brought to life but how can a business respond from a strategy perspective to disruptive technologies or and or industry shifts which we have seen and you know from your experience from clients that you've worked with what what what are some things that they can do well I think the first thing is to know about them and just be reading and staying up on the latest technologies and the second thing is to understand them you don't have to understand the algorithm and exactly how they work but really kind of the function that they could provide and then you know the third part would be thinking through is there a certain place where I can align this in my business and as the founder or CEO you don't necessarily have to be the person to answer those questions do you have someone in your team who has that tech background who can help with kind of the big picture architecting and then you can come in from a comms perspective of here's why we're incorporating this automation or this new AI technology you don't have to be the one who does everything awesome we've got another question from Richard and I don't know if he wanted to come on and ask it I'll give you a second if you want to if not I'll go ahead and fire away but if you want to come on on come on the screen nope that's all right I'll go ahead and oh there he is oh hi Richard you're broken up a little bit Richard very well I think you're gonna hear me now there we go yes awesome yeah it's these uh air pods after a while they let you know that you need new ones so great I'm at that point all right so I had a I have I'm running this uh kind of local manufacturing service is kind of kind of like a two-sided market for like the local Las Vegas economy and right now I'm a solo founder I'm going through the whole process of going out and talking to customers and I don't have a team assembled yet because I really wanted to get a good gauge on the problem and if there was a demand for it and I'm seeing that there is a huge demand for it here in the city and I was since I'm I'm not a technical person I'm more of a I'm a little technical but I'm not a technical fan I don't consider myself a technical founder so I wanted to I just had a general question about like how do you assemble or what dynamic I should be looking for for starting to assemble a team and starting start thinking about what I want to do with the MVP yeah so I would say you know that's that's a question that I get so so often of how do I build the team what are the right skill sets and you know anytime you're hiring or partnering you know that's developing relations particularly with a partnership it's like a marriage you know you're you're going you're combining finances you're going to market together I would say you're doing the right thing in assessing the market need and then kind of figuring out what your gaps are so focusing on your strengths and then saying you know maybe I need a data scientist maybe I need someone who understands a tech stack maybe I need someone who is really good at marketing and they can do all my social media stuff to get you know the word out and I can focus on leadership and operations so I would say just getting a piece of paper figuring out it like identifying what those strengths are in the areas where you feel like you need support whether it's across HR or finance or operations or technology kind of similar to what I did from the priority perspective and then look to potentially hire there and can you know they are distinct functions can you hire one person that initially in the beginning you know when there's not as much funding who might fill multiple roles and wear multiple hats and there are times where you don't have to necessarily hire you can bring on fractional support that's some kinds of work that I do with businesses where you know they're in the the earlier stages they don't want a full-time strategy officer but they will say you know I need a fractional chief strategy officer can can you give me a portion of your expertise each month oh yeah well yeah thank you yeah I've been a I've been a and then my second question was what types of uh what types of specific functions can I kind of save till later like like I said right now we're kind of thinking about like the I'm thinking about the MVP and what I want to look like and what I you know obviously I'm working on I kind of want to work with people to have different strengths and weaknesses and I do and stuff so we could kind of complicate but what are some of the uh roles that could probably come later that I don't really have to think about right away yeah I mean so much of it comes back to your strengths and kind of doing that analysis but I would say um for me getting the right accountant on board to get your finances in order uh you don't need to hire one per se you can outsource it and just thinking outsourcing versus hiring uh you know if you're still figuring out the product and kind of everything maybe you don't need the sales function right away because you are the face of the company and you are selling and as you're growing you grow that sales function as the product is kind of catching up so you know without having a ton of background I can't give us a concrete answer but that's kind of how my brain would process it of you know if you already have a handle on uh some of the off stuff maybe you don't need a cheap operating officer off the bat maybe you can do that in addition to the founder role and kind of bring on some of those roles later all right thank you so much for taking the time and talking to me you're awesome thank you yeah thank you so much we're gonna do one more question if that's right with you Susan and then we'll jump into some closing remarks and this is from Jeff B he's on LinkedIn what would your recommendation be to someone who wants to start a business as a side hustle while working the full-time job with the ultimate goal of turning the business into their full-time employment yes second part of that question but I think you'll probably answer it in this too so I'll let you respond uh so I I'm actually writing a book right now that has some of that content in there and one of the books that I read while researching it I think it's Chris Billadu don't don't quote me but it's like 27 days from your side hustle to your work so he kind of lays out some of the things that you can do in the process so the first thing is I would ask you know is there a conflict of interest in what you're currently doing and what you want to do as a side hustle and if you get cleared from that perspective you know I think it's great to kind of work on something on the side while you still have that steady income because especially as an early solopreneur and entrepreneur you're going to have ebbs and flows of revenue so I would say it's working on that initial idea it's getting that north star down or kind of the elements of that testing it in the market tweaking it so I'm not sure if you're going to be providing a product or a service but if again service-based can you get feedback from those customers or clients and how you can tweak your services moving forward but I think that's fantastic to kind of have two things in parallel because it also shifts the risk picture a little bit versus just fully taking a leap and then figuring everything out when you're just an entrepreneur on day one great yeah great advice great advice well listen we're going to be running out of time very shortly as much as I'd love to sit here and answer as many questions as we can we do have the window of time but before we go I want to make sure we thank all of you first of all who are attending on all the socials and and and the zoom and also Susan and I said it wrong Molly so that's all right Molly strategies thank you and hey you know we all make things I knew I might get us that up but we really want to extend a warm gratitude to you for coming on it would an amazing presentation I'm sure there's a thousand other questions that hopefully people feel compelled to reach out and connect with you about those questions before we go a couple few announcements for those of you who before you scurry off and get busy with the rest of your day so if you're not aware our applications are still open for our next DAV Patriot Bootcamp which is in October it's going to be hosted here at our headquarters in technically Erlanger, Kentucky it's in the Cincinnati Metro area it's a great area if you're not familiar with the DAV Patriot Bootcamp it is a transformative program that empowers our founders and the veteran and military communities including your spouses with comprehensive entrepreneurship startup education mentorship access to resources and I think most importantly a vital community committed to your success so you can access the application via our website which is patreon bootcamp.org or on our socials at LinkedIn Facebook DAV Patriot Bootcamp we're also looking for mentors for that program which is a really strong part of the program so if you're interested in that you can send us an email at www.patriotbootcamp.org where you can access our information via the socials of the website as well also I want you to make a note not to attend our live DAV Shark Tank event this is something that we do after a cohort takes place and we have winners that do the pitch competition this is yes this is inspired by the popular TV show Shark Tank and this event brings together a panel of accomplished veteran entrepreneurs potentially industry experts and even some celebrities from time to time where who are eager to support and invest in a veteran led business through this live pitch competition this is going to happen on October I'm sorry August 24th so please tune in live for that on our social networks as well and if you're interested in getting back to DAV Patriot Bootcamp and any other way please email us reach out to us in any way we'd be happy to talk about those opportunities with you speaking of networks I can't go without saying encourage you to join our social channels Facebook and LinkedIn as I mentioned before if you haven't done so already please there's a lot of information being shared we actually just started a segment called Founder Friday so you'll have a new post tomorrow with a new overview of a founder that has attended one of our programs and that we want to use that platform to share this information with you our community as well so stay tuned on our socials until next time thank you everybody for attending thank you Susan for being here part of our DAV Patriot Bootcamp family until next time everybody activate mentor create and grow thank you