At the heart of every SWOT lives the question, “What do we do now?”

Building upon your 12-month breakthrough goal, this episode is dedicated to dissecting actionable strategies that will cultivate the most essential, impactful elements that will most directly impact the 12-month goal.  

KEY HIGHLIGHTS:

• The SWOT exercise is part 5 in the  1-Day Business Acceleration Retreat. 
• Use the companion workbook available at www.aforceforgood.com/retreat to track your journey. You will develop a succinct plan, achieving clarity, and aligning team efforts.

Chapters:

• 00:02 - Welcome to the Retreat
• 00:05 - The Business Landscape for Women Founders
• 00:16 - Breaking Barriers: The Need for Exponential Growth
• 00:44 - Your Purpose-Led Plan for Success
• 02:14 - Taking Empowered Action with a SWOT Analysis
• 04:25 - Identifying Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
• 05:50 - The Power of Team Collaboration in SWOT
• 06:26 - Creating Actionable Plans for Breakthrough Goals
• 09:09 - The Importance of Being Specific
• 24:07 - Conclusion: Your Path Forward

TOPICS COVERED: 

• Understand why the SWOT methodology is a powerful tool in strategic decision-making.
• The secrets to conducting a successful SWOT analysis for your business.
• Prioritize the top three factors from your SWOT analysis that impact your company's journey towards realizing the 12-Month Breakthrough Goal.

Takeaways:

• Women-led businesses have the potential for significant growth, yet only 3% achieve $1 million in annual revenue.
• Conducting a SWOT analysis is crucial to identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in your business.
• Team involvement in SWOT discussions fosters collaboration and empowers members to contribute to business transformation.
• Focus on specific, actionable strengths that can directly impact your twelve-month breakthrough goals.
• Recognizing and addressing weaknesses is essential to prevent obstacles from hindering your business progress.
• Opportunities for growth often lie outside the organization, so identify and pursue them strategically.

NEXT STEPS:

• Listen to episode 6 –Design A Quarterly Map! 
• 1-Day Growth Plan Template & Companion Guide! Download the tools that complement this podcast series here: https://aforceforgood.biz/free-plan/
• Are You Ready to Grow? Find out your Growth Readiness Score and receive tools tailored to help you accelerate impact, scale, and profit. https://aforceforgood.biz/quiz/
• Pre-order your copy of "A Force For Good," the book launching in 2024, and immediately receive access to the full Force for Good Toolkit. 50+ tools and templates that will help you unlock the puzzle of growth in your business: https://aforceforgood.biz/book/
• Online Growth Accelerator! Sign up for the online path to turning your company into the high-impact, high-growth company you envision. https://aforceforgood.biz/accelerator/

***The Business Acceleration Retreat is also available in video format at the FFG YouTube Channel.***

ACCESS THE FULL BUSINESS ACCELERATION RETREAT on YOUTUBE:

Episode 1: Introduction:

https://youtu.be/OEsx0VU2VuQ?si=inHNNhcxwcv4I-63

Episode 2: Unleash Your Core Purpose

https://youtu.be/tWF4jPAck-c?si=yMMhgst38ObKj5Hb

Episode 3: Unlock Your Company Vision

https://youtu.be/tWF4jPAck-c?si=yMMhgst38ObKj5Hb

Episode 4: Discover Your Most-Needed 12-Month Breakthrough

https://youtu.be/NNJJveaqUsA?si=gkNJl7hIvOffNsJV

Episode 5: SWOT Your Way to Business Growth

https://youtu.be/fw4-wkz6Cns?si=RswTKUQ3e3iiIRYQ

Episode 6: Create a Winning Quarterly Map

https://youtu.be/xz7QNkdglSo?si=7pVcxR5NIfpSGZCR

Episode 7: 30-Day Goals Transform Your Team

https://youtu.be/i0shqlju2X0?si=BAoeEzdlYrZ8Q0cc

Episode 8: Using KPIs to Propel Business Breakthroughs

https://youtu.be/98MHXIU3mw0?si=sQIVEAaeqE9ImC7l

Episode 9: Crafting Your Weekly Dashboard for Success

https://youtu.be/zk87Ugbbhg4?si=pSmGNJ4KyGUgPmKR

Episode 10: Launch Your Weekly Acceleration Meeting

https://youtu.be/JHzKHAx2Q-s?si=iTwi8f07oQU88ObM

Welcome to the one day business Acceleration Retreat.

This experience is designed to help women founders just like you plan and execute the exponential growth of your business.

Only 3% of all women led businesses cross the chasm of generating $1 million or more in annual revenues, and only 2% are funded through venture capital.

These statistics are shocking, given that women are also known for delivering a higher return on capital and for being better able to handle major disruptors in business.

The one day business Acceleration retreat is your entryway into breaking through the barriers of exponential growth by helping you build a purpose led and visionary plan to inspire your team.

Also guiding you to discover specific, specific, repeatable actions that will create traction.

More prospects, more customers, more sales.

I am Coco Selman, five time founder, Impact investor, creator of the force for good business system, and your host on this transformative journey.

Women led business is the most powerful, innovative force in the world.

With purpose led leaders like you at the helm, we can lead in both impact and profit.

The future of business is women.

This is our time.

Let's make the world better through business.

Hi there.

Welcome to episode five.

So now we're embarking on the second stage of our journey, right?

First stage was to envision a brighter future.

Now we are building an actionable plan.

So in these next episodes, we will be building that plan.

So in this episode, we're going to develop.

We're going to do a simple swot analysis.

In the next episode, episode six, you're going to just design a quarterly map.

Then you're going to have 30 day goals, key performance indicators, and design a weekly dashboard.

So all these things are going to give you the ability to take empowered action.

What I like to call highest and best use action.

Be of highest and best use.

We always want to wake up every day in service of the purpose, the vision, the breakthrough.

And this method of building your plan in this actionable way will give you and every single member of your team the ability to be of highest and best use, highest service, right?

And here's the thing.

There's highest invest use, and there's the hamster wheel, right?

The hamster wheel is necessary.

The hamster wheel is what's creating your current situation, your current outcomes, right?

The hamster wheel is all the operational things you do every day.

Your habits, youre, whatever.

All right?

So in order to produce new results, we need to move into new actions, we need to create new actions, new results.

And so this section is going to help us identify exactly what we need to do in order to produce a new result.

And it's going to say, all right, here's the hamster wheel.

And you're going on the hamster wheel.

And somebody still has to make sure that the trains run on time and the toilets get cleaned and the phone calls get answered and product gets shipped.

That's the hamster wheel.

But you also need to make sure that you're making progress on your twelve month breakthrough.

Breakthrough will not happen without different action.

So we're going to start with the simple SWAT.

So, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

The reason we do a SWOT analysis, we look at the strengths, the weaknesses, opportunities and threats that exist in your organization right now.

And that gives you a an indication of how you should proceed.

Any business at any moment in time has a different set of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

So therefore, your highest and best use what you need to do next in order to create the breakthrough you're looking for.

It evolves over time.

So we start with a SWOT.

But it's important to recognize how important it is in the process of innovation and empowering your team members to consistently be in the conversation and discussion of what's working, what's not, what opportunities could we tap into that we're not?

Where could we make investment?

Where do we need to scale back?

So I find that swots happen all the time.

People are thinking about them all the time when they're putting together their plans.

But it is really helpful when you sit down with your team and you have a facilitated SWAT discussion.

So very few conversations are as exhilarating, collaborative, thought provoking, empowering, engaging.

As a well orchestrated SWAT sit down with your people in the field and do a swot analysis on your breakthrough or on some part of a challenge.

And you will see people's really get engaged because they are helping create transformation.

They're helping create the answer to the puzzle.

And they're the ones who know really, you might have an idea of what your strengths are, but involving others is really, really great.

So the heart of every SWAT lives the question, what do we do now?

So action.

It's helping us design the plan.

Plan that tells us which actions we should focus on in order to produce the breakthrough goal.

So that's the question, what can we do to achieve our twelve month breakthrough goal?

In this simple swot, we're always seeking the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that will most positively and negatively affect that goal.

It is less important that we find a long, exhaustive list of all the strengths of the company, all the weaknesses, all the opportunities, all the threads.

It's more important that you really comb it down into what are the most essential, impactful elements that will most directly drive or hold back if you're not mindful, your twelve month breakthrough goal.

The key is to be as specific as possible.

So I was in a meeting recently with my clinical team and as I mentioned previously, I'm in the healthcare business and the question came up, well, how can we have a breakthrough in getting more nurses into the field?

We need more nurses out taking care of patients.

And so everybody just said, okay, well we need more, more prospects.

Well how do you know that's what we need?

How do you know that we need prospects?

How are you sure?

Is it prospects we need or do we need to improve our yield between interview and who gets interviewed and which ones are qualified, who gets offered a job and who says yes.

Who says yes and shows up to orientation who says yes and makes it all the way out to the field.

So the more specific you can be and sometimes when we start, we don't know, we don't know where the problem is, we don't know where we need to make an improvement or where we need to create support.

But the more specific you can be the better.

Is it that your sales funnel gets stuck when you get lots of people coming to the website but nobody's to filling in the opt in or nobody's filling out after they get they do the opt in, they're not coming back and listening to the services or taking part in the next step.

So be as specific as you possibly can when you're doing swot analysis, it will help you pinpoint exactly where you need to focus your attention.

All right, so we're going to go right into it.

And this is a brainstorming exercise, right?

So you're going to do this on your own if you'd like, right now, or if you're doing it in a group, that's fine too.

But there's no, with brainstorming, no idea is a bad idea.

Every idea is a good idea, right?

We just, we just get stuff.

So we're going to focus first on our strengths.

So think first and foremost as you come in into the space and again connect your heart, trust your mind, trust your knowing, trust your senses, and allow yourself to focus in on your core purpose, the reason your company exists, why it's worth it.

In the vision what's the vision you are creating the company vision 100 years from now, the transformation available to the world that you're working towards every single and now let yourself remember what is the breakthrough?

And let yourself see and feel the connection between the twelve month breakthrough and how that will help you deliver the core purpose and move towards the vision.

Feel that connection.

And right now, go ahead and start to think about all the strengths that you have within your business and help you achieve that twelve month breakthrough goal.

Write them down.

What are your strengths?

What are the people who have particular value, information, knowledge, success teams that are, could really help you with this?

What's their strength?

What are they good at?

What are the systems that could help you?

There's the systems that are in place already that could be leveraged, utilized, amplified systems that are already really good.

What technology do you have in place?

Think about your reputation as business.

What strengths in your reputation could help you achieve your twelve month breakthrough about your customer service?

How could that help you?

What about the strengths of your product, your solutions, services you sell?

What about your production line, your supply and delivery process, marketing, your sales?

Specifically, what are your strengths that can help you achieve your twelve month breakthrough?

Well done.

Go ahead now and circle the top three strengths that when harnessed, can most impact daily, weekly progress on your twelve month breakthrough goal.

About three, a lot of strengths, but some are really gonna, if you really.

Really focused on those and amplified those.

They could really help you.

Ones that could be action, actionably used to your benefit.

Okay, now going to go into weaknesses.

All right, so what are the weaknesses that are holding you back from achieving your twelve month breakthrough?

What are the weaknesses of your company that are most impeding progress on your twelve month goal?

What's going to stop you again, what are the limits, the bottlenecks, constraints?

Is there a team that doesn't have full capacity, knowledge, experience?

Is there a system that is not working?

Is there a technology everybody hates to use?

Is there some part of your product or your service that's stopping you?

Something that a weakness in your product, service or solution?

Is there a weakness in your sales, your marketing?

Is there a weakness in your ability to connect with your audience?

Do you not have a clear, unique value proposition?

What are your weaknesses?

Do you have the resources you need, the funding, the time, people to achieve this twelve month goal?

Write down everything that is stopping you or could stop you in this year ahead.

Okay?

Get them all out.

Do you have enough?

Do you know, do you have the data?

Do you have, you have metrics that can help you deduce what the actual problem is.

What are the specific problems?

Not enough funding.

For what?

Not enough funding to do x.

If you had funding to do x, that make a big difference.

We had a person to do x.

Somebody was really good at x.

Or if you had, if you could increase the number of prospects or suspects or opt ins, what would that level of increased fee?

It's too few.

How could that improve you?

So think about you've just written down a whole bunch of weaknesses.

Well, maybe only a few.

Circle the three that are most detrimental to the twelve month goal.

The three that left unresolved will most impede progress.

Hold you back.

Nice work.

All right, so now we're going to.

Think about the opportunities.

Opportunities are usually things that happened that are available outside the business.

But however you want to brainstorm them and they come out, it's fine.

It doesn't matter if it's internal.

External goal here is to get as many ideas out as you can.

What are the opportunities that could accelerate progress on this goal?

Unfiltered.

Write them all down.

You had ten x the commitment or ten x the focus, or ten x the time to do this thing.

To pursue this opportunity, you'd have a breakthrough.

Might include opportunities that are within the company that haven't been fully utilized or optimized, like the marketing systems that need attention or sales lists that haven't been called on.

Maybe you aren't using your prospect list as much as you could.

It could also be external opportunities that would open up significant growth to your company.

Maybe there's a trade show or a conference that if you attended that.

Or maybe there's a mailing list that if you got access to or if you hired or partnered with someone, something, it would facilitate your twelve month breakthrough.

Don't get distracted thinking about all the opportunities out there.

All men on the opportunities that most directly accelerate your twelve month goal.

Fun, isn't it?

Okay, good work.

Now again, circle the top three opportunities.

Right.

Your brain is creating strategy, clarity.

Act of writing things down is helping you get things from outside of your head, outside of your amorphous, into thinking into words, onto a page.

And then when you start to talk about them with your team, it's going to create even greater clarity and possibility and action.

That's what's going to create results, of course.

So now we're going to think about threats again.

Twelve month breakthrough goal.

What are the threats?

What threats need attention and solutions to ensure they do not get in the way of your twelve month goal.

Every business faces risks that affect its industry, its environment, the economics, the regulations, supply challenges, talent shortages, other shortages, market disruption that could affect your business.

What are those threats?

Maybe you're not moving quickly enough with AI in a particular way.

Maybe there's this massive regulatory change coming along.

You could get distracted.

Or maybe the interest rate level is affecting your business or your ability to acquire more cash.

If you need to invest more cash, maybe you need to acquire, you need more leverage.

So what are the threats that you're facing?

What are the threats?

The risks.

And again, sometimes in swot, people think of threats as being only external to the business.

Just write down all your risks in whatever way they come and have them be focused on your twelve month goal.

What's going to stop your goal from manifesting in the next twelve months?

And circle three, the three top risks.

And part of it is you want to, you know, sometimes they're just massive risks.

I'm thinking about my own business right now.

Again, I'm in healthcare and we have this massive regulatory requirement happening right now.

And so it's just really important to.

Know that we have, we're going to have to allocate resources to that.

But we still need to free up resources to create our breakthrough.

And we can't have the pandemic.

Right.

Think about the pandemic.

That was a massive disruption and how easy it was to just tell ourselves, well, we can't, we don't have time, we're distracted.

But in this, the idea here is you're saying, no, I am accounting for the threats that would distract us, that would keep us from doing what we want.

We are going to do them.

We are going to achieve our twelve month goal.

Take the actions that we need and give it the air and the oxygen and the love and the nurturance that it needs, the sunshine in order to achieve the goal.

Doesn't matter if there's a pandemic where the interest rates change, doesn't matter.

We're going to still, we're going to still move forward.

So we're accounting for these risks.

So the end of the day, you can't have the excuse that, well, the nursing shortage or there was a problem in China and it couldn't ship anything, those are your risks.

So now you have to overcome them.

These are not reasons why you won't get to your twelve month goal.

These are the reason, these are the things you need to make sure that you, you overcome, right.

To come up with a different way.

So the three risks that could most distract you, just, you know, keep you from success bottlenecks.

And then you're just going to make sure that you list all of those three.

So I encourage you, if you haven't already, download go to www.

Dot a forceforgood.

Dot this slash retreat.

Download the guidebook that comes with it, along with the template, the one day planned template, and you'll see there's a place to put your top three strengths to amplify, your top three weaknesses to overcome, top three opportunities you want to leverage, and the top three threats to mitigate.

And by all means, do this first on your own if you like, but do this with your team.

Make sure everybody's aware of these things, get their input, get their feedback, and congratulate yourself.

You've just identified your swot for your twelve month breakthrough goal.

Congratulate yourself.

You've just achieved a massive amount.

And just notice how much clarity you're having now right about what's the question?

What do I need to do next in order to achieve my goal?

All right, so enough on swot.

We're going to move forward now and I will see you in a few on the next episode, which is designing a quarterly right, okay, thanks.

We'll see you in a few.

Are you ready to build a business that leads in both impact and profit?

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