annual planning, sharpen or swing?

Summary

heading into a new year, most entrepreneurs are doing one of two things. they’re either chasing every shiny object so they never sharpen a single business into something dangerous, or they’re so heads-down optimizing the same business that they’ve stopped looking for bigger swings.

the metaphor I use is sharpening a stick. if you keep sharpening it, eventually you have a spear. that’s most early-stage entrepreneurs. but at some point the spear is sharp enough. you don’t need a sharper spear, you need an axe.

I lived this with Garage Gym Athlete. for years I kept sharpening it. by the time it hit its ceiling, the better move wasn’t a sharper version of GGA, it was a different tool entirely. that’s how PT Biz got started.

annual planning is the moment to ask the honest question: am I still sharpening, or is it time to swing? if you’re stuck refining a business that’s already maxed out, sharpening more won’t help. you have to be willing to put the spear down and go find the axe.

Transcript

introduction to the concept of annual planning and its importance

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. All right, listen to this short podcast episode before you do your annual planning this year. And if you have already done your annual planning, maybe just give this quick listen. I’m going to go over it as fast as I can.

It’s really just an idea, a mindset for you to be thinking about. This is the Better Human Business Podcast. I’m Jerred Moon. And if you’ve ever been in the woods before and you have a knife and you find a stick, you might only know how to do one thing, and that is to sharpen the stick to a point. As a young boy who grew up in the woods, around a lot of woods.

That’s what I did because I didn’t I don’t know how to do anything else. I don’t know how to whittle a block of wood into something cool, but I can take a stick and I can sharpen it. All right. It’s not that hard. And if you’ve never done this, just imagine it right. You’re cutting angled slices off the stick until it comes to a point.

analogy of spear sharpening to explain business focus and optimization

And one of two things happens when you’re doing this. You’re either going to sharpen or you’re either going to sharpen it so much that you end up screwing it up like you’re just there. Oh, my gosh, this is amazing. This is like such a sharp point like this. This could kill any animal I come across, but you keep going, you keep going.

And then it can’t get any sharper. So you’re just going to break the tip off. You’re just going to like ruin this miniature spear that you’ve created. And then the other way is like you just kind of get bored. You’re like, eh, I don’t know if I want to sharpen the spear anymore. So you haven’t sharpened it enough for it to be a useful weapon.

If you did encounter an animal. You kind of got bored. You moved on. Yeah. You know what? Maybe I’ll you know, maybe I’ll just watch some birds instead. I don’t know what you choose to do in the woods other than then sharpen a spear. But anyway, my point being, those are the only two things are going to happen if you decide you’re going to make a spear with a knife.

discussion on balancing optimization and the need for new strategies

And this 100 percent translates to your business. And you have to know what position that you’re in. You really do. OK, I talk to entrepreneurs all the time about. Staying focused in avoiding shiny objects. So that would be the entrepreneur who’s sitting there sharpening a spear. They get bored. They want to go watch birds.

They do something else. They go fishing. They just decide to do something else before they ever truly sharpen that stick to a spear. They move on. They never really saw the full potential of that thing. And so they just they’re kind of stuck, you know, like they and they keep doing that over and over again.

So they never get the full growth potential of any business. They start. But here’s the deal. They’re doing fine overall. They are doing fine, you know, because they are doing multiple things. They’re still moving. So they’re they feel like they’re making progress. They’re making income. But what they don’t realize is they’re missing out on what they could have truly created.

advice on identifying when to enhance current strategies or seek new opportunities

And that takes a ton of focus, avoiding shiny objects, just hunkering down and knowing that it’s a one percent improvement, a five percent improvement, a two percent improvement across all these metrics in your business that are going to level you up in growth. That’s most entrepreneurs. It is. But then there’s another entrepreneur and I’ve been this entrepreneur.

And that’s the one that’s sitting there and they’re oversharpening. And I want you to think about if that’s you. Some people are so focused that they’re just sitting there and they just keep going. They just keep trying to sharpen it. It’s awesome already. They keep sharpening, sharpening, sharpening.

And they keep going to eventually they end up making it worse. They do too many new things. As an entrepreneur, this is the entrepreneur that has probably maxed out their current opportunity. And you have to realize every opportunity has a maximum. Some maximums are incredibly high. Some aren’t that high.

strategic considerations for effective annual planning

And so that’s something that you have to really. Really think about, because you also need to think about your skill set. What if your skill set is level eight income earning potential, but your business opportunity, the vehicle that you’re in is a level four or level five and you’ve already kind of maxed it out and you’re like, well, I can’t earn any more income here.

I need to move on to another opportunity. That can be really hard to see. And I know I did this at Garage Gym Athlete. And while I haven’t fully moved on from Garage Gym Athlete, I probably I optimized that so much so that I probably wasn’t going to grow any further without doing something drastic.

That’s partnering with like other major brands or, you know, going down to like additional revenue streams, like supplements, like there are all these paths for growth in Garage Gym Athlete, but you know, or software like creating our own app, like I explored all these avenues. And what I kind of realized was like, I don’t want to do any of those things.

closing thoughts on using annual planning as a tool for significant business improvement

Like I don’t want to have a supplement company attached to this. I don’t want to have a software company that I’m running for this. Like there’s just all these things I didn’t really want to do. I didn’t want to partner with all these influencers to try and grow the brand. But those are things that absolutely would have worked and would have increased the opportunity size at Garage Gym Athlete.

But I just didn’t want to pursue them because mainly I wasn’t interested. And so I sat there and I over optimized for a long time. And it was like, hey, with what you’re currently doing, you’re kind of you’re optimal. You know, I got to that point in Garage Gym Athlete. So it’s like you either have to get a new opportunity within Garage Gym Athlete or something new altogether.

I ended up doing something new altogether with my business partners over at PT Biz. A lot of you kind of know this story, but that’s ultimately what happened. And so I bring this back to the example is sometimes you need to sharpen. That’s 80, 90 percent of most entrepreneurs. You just need to sit there and sharpen, be bored, optimize 1 percent, 2 percent, 5 percent improvements across the entire chain of your business.

Stay focused. Keep growing. Avoid shiny objects. Some of you are in the situation I got to where it’s like, OK, you’re over optimizing without some new dramatic shift in opportunity. And that doesn’t mean starting a new business. So hopefully that was clear. I did jump into a new business with business partners, but I told you the three or four different ways I could have expanded Garage Gym Athlete and kept going.

I just didn’t want to go down that route. And so that’s within your business. So what I’m not saying is, hey, do you feel like you’re maxed out? Start a new business, because sometimes that can kill your existing business, too. What I’m saying is it might be time to look for a new opportunity or expansion.

So it’s what either within your business, new opportunity or expansion or outside of your business, new opportunity or expansion. That’s how you’re going to keep growing. And so in that in that situation, quit oversharpening it. It’s sharp enough. It’s time to grab an axe. So an axe is a completely different weapon.

You have to go find it. It’s much more powerful. It can chop down a tree. A spear is very targeted. So you want a bigger opportunity. I’m not trying to get too lost in the metaphor here, but like a spear is a very specific tool. It can do a few things. Right. It can it can poke. It can stab like you could throw it like whatever.

But an axe is much more versatile. And again, it’s if I was lost in the woods, I’d I’d much rather have that. So the axe is the bigger opportunity is what I also want to, you know, kind of end the metaphor with is like, don’t go build. Don’t go sharpen another spear. Don’t get another stick, because if you’re like, you know what?

I got this business to high six figures, low seven figures, something like that. And I know I can do that again. So I’m just going to create a new business. Another six figure business or whatever sounds great. But all you’re doing is creating another spear. And then eventually you’ll have multiple spears when really you need an axe.

You need something that can chop down a damn tree. And so think about that when you are pursuing expansion or new opportunities. You need to be looking for the axe, OK? You need to find the axe to swing the much bigger opportunity. Sometimes that takes building relationships, really. Thinking through what would, you know, 10x your next opportunity.

These are the things you have to really sit down and think through it. And I know I’m not giving you super tangible advice on here. Do this thing. But I want you to think about it because you’re all on this path, this journey somewhere. And I’ve made mistakes by oversharpening, creating new spears when I should have been looking for an axe.

I’ve done all these things, but I feel like I’m very clear now. I have some sharpened spears. And moving forward, I’m swinging an axe. There are new opportunities on the table for me. I’m swinging. I’m going for them and I’m looking for, you know, a really big outcome with some of the new things that I’m pursuing.

And I think that you should do the same. So with all that. Don’t create more spears, either sharpen it all the way. Don’t oversharpen or go find a damn axe. Either way, try harder. Go. Go. Go.