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Posted: Mon 7th Sep 2026
Last updated: Mon 7th Sep 2026
6 min read
Reviewed by Marc Gardner, senior content manager
My client Jay had a clear idea of what he wanted from his business. He'd had it for years. The trouble was, most of it existed in his head.
He's a creative and a marketer, so ideas come easily. There was always a potential new project, a client request, an interesting collaboration or something else worth exploring.
And, like many people running a small business, he found it easier to respond to what was in front of him than make time for the plans he'd set for himself.
Client work had a deadline, and opportunities arrived with a sense of urgency. His own goals were much easier to postpone.
Some of them had been postponed for years.
I see this often with owners of micro-businesses. They usually have a reasonably good sense of where they want the business to go. Ask them about it and they'll tell you.
But that thinking can be surprisingly hard to use when it's scattered across notes, conversations and ideas you've been carrying around for months.
So that's where Jay started. Over six weeks, he worked through:
what he wanted the business to become
what mattered to him personally
the values he wanted it to reflect
the risks he needed to keep an eye on
He also looked at which parts of the business he genuinely wanted to develop.
He could see where his day-to-day decisions fitted the business he said he wanted. He could also spot where he'd drifted away from it.
And because Jay is a creative, he made the strategy his own. He designed it and made it visual rather than producing a conventional document full of headings and tables.
For your strategy, use whatever format helps you think clearly. The value comes from having something concrete enough to return to.
One of the biggest problems for a micro-business owner is that quite a lot of opportunities genuinely are worth considering.
Individually, each one may make perfect sense. But put enough of them together and you've suddenly filled your week with work that wasn't part of your plan.
That was happening to Jay.
He wanted to develop a collective and spend more time working with Michelin restaurant clients. He already had existing client commitments and plenty of other ideas competing for his attention.
Eventually, he tried to carry too much at once and burnt out.
At that point, his strategy became useful in a much more practical way. It gave him a reference point whenever something new appeared.
He decided his health had to come first. Time away from work went into the diary.
He needed space for creative work because that's central to what he does, alongside the commitments he'd already made to clients.
New ideas could still be good ideas, but they had to fit around those priorities.
So when something landed in front of him, he had a better question to ask: "What happens if I say yes to this now?"
That question forces you to look at the decision as a whole.
Writing everything down helped Jay, but there was another piece he needed – accountability.
After finishing the strategy work, he joined a mastermind group. Each month, he chose three things to work on and reported back on what he'd actually done.
The group questioned his choices, challenged him when necessary and noticed patterns that were harder for him to see from inside the business.
Within four months, Jay had completed half of the goals he'd originally set for the whole year. Some had been hanging around on his list for years.
His working week hadn't suddenly become longer. He'd started giving the things he cared about a defined place in it.
That regular check-in also made it harder for urgent work to swallow everything else.
You don't need to produce an elaborate strategic plan before you can make better decisions.
You do need to be clear enough about your priorities that you can recognise when you've started drifting away from them.
When a new opportunity appears, spend a little time working out what accepting it would change.
Does it help with something you've already decided matters?
What would have to move down the list to make room for it?
Are you choosing it because it's genuinely important or because someone wants an answer quickly?
And what will saying yes cost you in time, energy or attention?
There will nearly always be a trade-off somewhere. That's fine when you've chosen it deliberately.
Problems start when you keep making those decisions without noticing what they're displacing.
Jay hasn't stopped coming up with ideas. That would be a strange goal for someone whose work depends on creativity.
What's changed is his reaction to them.
An idea can stay an idea for a while. He doesn't have to turn every interesting possibility into a project immediately. He can park something, finish what he's already committed to and come back to it later if it still makes sense.
For a small business owner, that's a useful discipline to develop.
There will always be clients, emails, opportunities and new ideas asking for your attention. Without a clear view of where you're trying to go, it's easy for the loudest thing to set the agenda.
A strategy gives you something steadier to come back to.
Put yours somewhere you can see it. Refer to it often enough that it becomes part of how you make decisions.
And when a new idea is worth pursuing but the timing is wrong, give yourself permission to leave it on the shelf for now.
