Biz Coach Insider – Edition 11
Strategic Planning That Actually Survives Contact
If you’re reading this, congratulations. You’ve already separated yourself from the 94% of business owners who mistake activity for progress and optimism for strategy. Most strategic plans don’t fail because the ideas were bad. They fail because reality showed up… loudly… by February.
This edition is about closing the planning vs execution gap, aligning strategy to what actually happens inside your business, and replacing “hope” with disciplined action.
As always, everything here runs through the lens of The 7 Core Competencies and the 8 Phases of Scale. Because strategy that ignores your current phase is just cosplay.
Leadership
Why Most Strategic Plans Collapse by February
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Most strategic plans are written in January optimism and executed in February chaos.
The top reasons plans die early:
They are too long-term for short-term reality
They assume the owner’s time magically frees up
They lack weekly execution rhythms
They aren’t tied to accountability or decision authority
This is especially deadly in Phase 2–4 businesses ($100K–$1M), where the owner is still the bottleneck and leadership maturity hasn’t caught up to business complexity.
Playbook: Closing the Planning vs Execution Gap
Effective leaders do three things differently:
They plan in horizons, not years
Vision: 3–5 years
Strategy: 12 months
Execution: 90 days
They assign ownership, not intentions
If no one owns it, it doesn’t exist.They review weekly, not quarterly
Strategy without cadence becomes fiction.
Action Step:
Define 3 priorities for the next 90 days, assign one owner per priority, and review progress weekly. No slides. No speeches. Just results.
Sales & Marketing
Aligning Sales Targets to Strategic Priorities (Not Hope)
Sales goals are not strategy. They’re outcomes.
Yet most businesses reverse-engineer nothing and still expect revenue to show up on time. That’s not confidence. That’s gambling.
Common mistakes:
Revenue goals disconnected from capacity
Marketing spend not tied to conversion math
Sales targets ignoring delivery constraints
Sales targets must align with:
Your current phase of scale
Your operational capacity
Your cash flow needs, not ego goals
In early growth phases, chasing top-line revenue without margin discipline is one of the fastest paths to failure.
Action Step:
Reverse-engineer your revenue target:
Required deals
Required leads
Required conversion rates
If the math doesn’t work, neither will the plan.
Financial Acumen
Budgeting for Reality, Not Best-Case Scenarios
Most budgets fail for one reason:
They are written for the business you wish you had, not the one you’re actually running.
Reality check:
82% of failed businesses cite cash flow issues
Most failures trace back to overly optimistic forecasting
Revenue does not equal cash
Profit does not equal safety
This is why the Small Business Survival Guide emphasizes conservative forecasting, especially during volatile or compressed industry cycles.
Survival Guide Principle
Budget for:
Slower sales cycles
Higher expenses
Lower conversion rates
Then outperform the plan.
Action Step:
Track weekly:
Cash on hand
Gross margin
13-week rolling cash forecast
Hope is not a financial strategy.
The Coaching Corner
Teaching Clients to Plan in 90-Day Sprints
For coaches, consultants, and fractional leaders:
Your value is not in giving answers. It’s in building execution discipline.
The most effective client transformations happen when:
Strategy is broken into 90-day sprints
Metrics are reviewed weekly
Adjustments happen in real time, not post-mortem
Why 90 days?
Long enough to execute
Short enough to stay honest
Forces prioritization
This mirrors how high-performing companies operate across all eight phases of scale.
Action Step:
Have every client define:
One primary outcome
Three execution priorities
Weekly scorecard
Then hold the line.
Free vs Insider+
Free Edition (You’re reading it)
You get:
Strategic clarity
The “what” and the “why”
High-level frameworks
Insider+ Edition (Paid)
You get:
90-day sprint planning templates
Sales-to-strategy alignment worksheets
Conservative forecasting models from the Survival Guide
Real client case studies by phase of scale
Monthly playbooks and live Q&A with my coaching team
Closing Thoughts
Strategic planning isn’t about intelligence.
It’s about discipline, realism, and execution.
Businesses don’t fail because they didn’t plan.
They fail because they planned once… and never adjusted.
If you want to scale past survival and into something durable, transferable, and profitable, you need a framework that survives contact with reality.
That’s what The Biz Coach Insider is here to deliver.
Let’s build something that lasts.