Your Vision, Your Strategy, & Your Tactics

Whenever I’m figuring out whether to do anything, I often turn to this Model:

Vision ==> Strategy ==> Tactics

Most people become fixated with tactics. An example of tactics would be… 

“Hey, if I put weird little emojis in the subject line, the clickthrough rates will increase.” Or, “Hey, if I join this Telegram group of crypto signals, I’m going to be able to know which coins to buy before the general public.” Or, “Hey, my wife seems angry today. What if I just get her a nice bouquet of flowers… that seems to do the trick.” Whatever. 

Tactics are great. Fantastic. These are the little tricks that can give you a little (or sometimes a massive) boost to your business or other goals. 

The problem with tactics is that they’re short lived.

The benefit of tactics is they’re most often super easy to implement. The downside is that because they’re so easy to implement, everybody does it.

Soon, a tactic becomes familiar. Familiarity breeds contempt… and things go back to the way they were. 

You can’t build real wealth and long-term success with tactics. 

Tactics are just the gasoline you throw in an already roaring fire… to give it that extra boost.

So, what sits above tactics? 

Tactics should serve strategies.

Strategies are the models you follow.

For example, some people use the really great strategic model of getting a bunch of people into their funnel for free, and over time, turn them into paying customers.

That’s not the only way, of course.

One strategy, for example, is to typically start at the high end… and try to work with the top line clients from the start - as opposed to starting free and building your way up.

Start with high end products that are designed specifically for people who are truly committed to being successful.

This strategy is not a WalMart strategy, it’s more of a Whole Foods strategy. Both are viable models. 

Different contexts and different characteristics determine which model is employed. 

For a strategy to work, you need to have a few things.

You do one thing exceptionally well, you do one thing pretty well, and you do the third thing slightly better than average… and everything else is just mediocre. 

That is a great strategy.

Now what lives above strategy is vision. 

And the vision is the thing you’re committed to doing over the next decade or even 25 years of your life. 

For example, almost exactly 60 years ago, on May 25, 1961, President Kennedy announced that we’re going to put a man on the moon. That was the vision. The strategy, of course, was multifaceted, we had to develop a ton of things, to test them, etc. The tactics were all the workarounds, bandaids, and ingenious shortcuts to make all this work on time. 

My overriding vision is to put customers absolutely ahead of everybody else. 

Which is very uncommon in this business. People will usually put affiliates and joint venture partners ahead of customers. 

My strategy is our webinars, because webinars allow me to give value before asking for a sale. 

I can prove what it’s like to be a customer before they have to be a customer. And then give them the opportunity to be a customer. 

The final consideration is tactics. This is where I now have the most freedom since the vision and strategy are already in place. 

Sometimes, I’ll do no replay webinars. Sometimes I'll do webinars that straight up tell you that hey, there's a product at the end. Sometimes there’s more of a build up, and then there are other even more fancy tactics than that. 

Bottom line is this.

Anybody trying to make money online who doesn't have a vision is fighting a very uphill battle. 

If you don't have a vision, any strategy seems valid and viable, and oftentimes you build strategies that are contradictory to each other. And the whole thing falls apart. 

Most people don’t even have strategic thinking. They’re very tactical minded… which is why they jump from one cool tactic to another and aren’t successful as a result. 

So when you go back to the game board you should check yourself, and first, ask “hey, what’s my vision?” 

What’s the thing I’m willing to commit to for the next 10 years of my life to… to have an absolute paradigm shift happen. 

The strategy will be - what are the 1, 2 or 3 things that are going to most likely serve me the longest to help me achieve that vision. 

And the tactics are… what things we can slap on it, bolt on it, to incrementally accelerate things in the short term that get us traction and momentum.

To Your Success!

Steve.

Master Online Entrepreneur