Speaker 1 00:00
Hey, welcome to the Crater's Edge. This is Strategic Monday, where we talk about the drivers and conditions of the experts' crater digital economy, and topics that affect how we do what we do, what we should be doing, and what we may need to do less of. It's also where we dive deep and take on the hard, sometimes unpopular topics we need to understand in order to advance the expert creator economy and to stand out in today's changes of low trust, the saturation of AI and market saturation. It really is all about getting real results for the customers, for the people we serve. Hi, I'm Michele. I'm your host here at the Creator's Edge. With over 30 years of professional practice as an educator in several countries and across the U.S. I understand just how big of a deal it is to influence the thinking, attitudes, beliefs, behavior, skills, and knowledge of others. As ladies and gentlemen, there is a real human cost when we muck it up. This business space is still young and without any guardrails, because right now anyone can say anything in any way they want, and you know what? It's just simply not nice to mess with people's money and life. Heaven knows there's way too much falderal on the internet as it is. Promising to help others learn something or how to do something should not add to that messiness. Well, welcome. In today's podcast, we're going to dive a little deeper into actually what is strategic planning. When we talk about Strategic Monday, a lot of people mix up what planning and strategic planning are all about. So I thought today we'd get real clear on that and start in this series for the next couple of months to talk deeply about what it means to develop positive, strong strategies that are strategic. Now, strategic planning is a terrific tool, and it's used in businesses everywhere to effect positive change. It is logical. It's timely. It's quite vital. It's empowering, and it is a really fun process. Strategic planning solves problems and establishes a wonderful framework to guide decision making. Strategic planning truly is a very helpful as a process tool, and that is useful at every level of the work we do as expert creators in this digital economy. Now think of it as any kind of process. We know how to do processes, work through processes like creating funnels and follow-up funnels, like email funnels. Well, that's a process. Think of strategic planning as an extended or expanded version of a thinking process, a problem-solving process. It can be applied to projects, problems, and processes of every kind. In its truest form, strategic planning guides the future direction of a group or organization, based on first a thorough assessment of the present and some pretty spiffy forecasting of the future, you might hear and see some things like that going on right now, where we're talking about this new era of the expert creator economy, where trust is low, where sales are dropping off, where people are saying things like courses are dead. Well, of course, courses aren't dead. People always need to know how to learn. But the problem might be with the type of courses that have been created, and the paradigm around that, where you just go A to Z, create it in a weekend, or let AI populate your course, and there you have a course right there. Maybe the root cause of the problem, but until we look at strategic planning and do a proper assessment, we might just be adding features. We think we know what the problem is, but we haven't gotten deep enough, so I think that might be something that's plaguing our industry right now. But let's carry on. Let's let's think more about strategic planning, and maybe you've been involved in some strategic plans, and maybe you don't like them, maybe you love them, but let's think about it some more. Strategic planning is not without its pitfalls. You know, perhaps you have been involved with or heard of a strategic plan that never got off the ground, or if it did, it had a ridiculous crash landing. Worse yet, the strategic plan was stuffed down, perhaps. Your throat of the people you worked with, as you will do this.
Speaker 1 05:03
It's certainly true that strategic planning needs many pieces and people to do what they say they will do, and most important, to know what the plan actually is, and above all, to believe in that plan. And I can imagine all of us have plans in our lives that have done well, and some that haven't. Just imagine, like if you've ever planned a great family vacation, and you only find out that your kids, your spouse, or whoever thinks the vacation is horrible and complains all the way to the beach. Well, strategic planning can be like that. It can also be the vacation of a lifetime, keep you on target, move you in the right direction as a business, as an individual. You can use strategic planning in your home life. It's really one of the funnest tools I have ever worked with. In fact, I even authored a book on it that was pretty successful. But let's look here now about what the literature on strategic planning-if you've ever read or studied a business book-it could be presented in the context of concepts that don't sound very much like the creator economy about being an expert or about creating content or having podcasts. There are terms like customer centers. Now a lot of us are getting very used to some of the marketing terms and some things like sale objectives. But when it comes to being our own boardroom, our own CEOs, and saying let's engage in a strategic planning process that may sound very foreign and very confusing and intimidating. Well, let's break it down into a couple pieces here. Now we all know what a plan is. We have short-term plans, long-term plans, mid-range plans. We may have a plan for the day, so planning simply implies prioritizing tasks with whatever resources you have. It's kind of the business as usual, and what are you going to get done in what period of time? Now here's the difference: strategic planning implies rethinking priority tasks with what available resources you have to achieve a new outcome, a new result. So it's really strategic means the very best choices you can make and resources you can tap into. And we might look later. I'll provide some vocabulary around this in a handout for you, but we want to lay the foundation for understanding the tenets of the strategic planning process. We'll look at those key components and principles that lead to a strategic successful plan. Now we we have been in this business for a great many years. Some of us, I've been a professional educator for over 30 years. I've had a few different businesses that have done well. It's a little trickier here in this today's creator course, expert digital economy. But as we think during this era of change, how to more strategically respond, and then we'll look at some of those tools that'll help us to be successful in this time where AI is magnifying some of the problems that the industry already had. I get a kick out of some people say, "Oh, it's AI's fault that trust is low. Well, no, it's not. It's just AI has magnified that, and that quick fix mentality, and oh, make a million in a weekend, and some of the paradigms that really do not serve individual businesses, and nor do they serve the individuals running the business or the people that we promise results. So we'll continue to think about what strategic planning is, and we'll identify the components of strategic planning. We're going to look at what kind of critical thinking we might need? We're going to look at the tools of strategic planning. One of them is going to be an A three. We'll look at why we choose perhaps a different path, and that perhaps this oh courses are dead, or oh let's get more features to sell better. That those really are not strategies; those are features, and that's a response, and not necessarily a deeply thought through response. Strategic planning is about thinking things through, choosing your highest priorities, with the. Best, most accurate strategies. So we'll keep looking at this and understanding what strategic planning is on our strategic Monday, and be sure to join me on Thursday when we discuss.
Speaker 1 10:12
We're going to look at some tools to help you with your creator business, whether you call it a course creation, a content creation, an expert, an influencer. When you take what you know or know how to do, and you want someone else to learn that, and you want to make money doing so, then you're in what's being termed now as the expert creator economy, and it's pretty baby, pretty baby business. We've only been-it's only been around for a little while, and is what we're going to do on Thursday. That is the Master's way, and in Thursday's podcast, we are going to look this week at what's called an A three. Now, that's a really cool tool that's going to help you understand a little bit more about deciding on your topics and being more strategic in how you develop them, market them, and sell them, and the type of influence you are going to make. Until then, becoming a creator it does not mean just a bunch of likes and followers, but it's someone who can prove up on their results. And so, until then, blessings on your journey as a creator. Maybe an expert creator who will ask better questions to get better results for those they serve. That is the heart of strategic planning, and that's what we talk about on Strategic Monday. Better questions for better results.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
