6. What's your owner's intent? You’re probably overcomplicating it. (Part 1 of Strategic Plan Series)
Your Owner’s Intent is the practical reason why you started your business. It’s not the “why” behind your business although your Owner’s Intent will absolutely impact your “why” or the heartbeat behind your work. Today we are diving into Owner’s Intent as part one of the Simple Strategic Plan series on More Than Ambition!
Main takeaways
A strategic plan is a foundational blueprint for a business's future direction.
Owner's intent is the practical aspect of why a business was started and how it serves the owner.
Aligning your owner's intent with God's will is crucial for Christian entrepreneurs.
Success as a Christian entrepreneur is obedience to the Lord.
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EPISODE SUMMARY (AI-Generated)
In this episode, Dusty Hegge introduces the concept of a strategic plan as an alternative to a traditional business plan. She emphasizes the importance of building a strong foundation for a business and provides a free template called the Simple Strategic Plan. Dusty discusses the significance of the owner's intent and how it impacts the direction of a business. She encourages entrepreneurs to align their intentions with God's will and emphasizes that success as a Christian entrepreneur is obedience to the Lord.
TIMESTAMPS (AI-Generated)
00:00 - Do not be ashamed of your ambition
02:20 - For the Christian, Everything is Ministry
03:18 - Equipping Christian Entrepreneurs
04:37 - Refocusing and Strategic Planning
06:02 - Excitement for the Future
TRANSCRIPT (AI-Generated)
Dusty (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the More Than Ambition podcast. My name is Dusty Hegge. I am owner of Caffeinated Sites, a website template shop to help you energize your business. And here on the More Than Ambition podcast, we focus on growing a business with intentionality, with surrender, and in chasing our God -given goals with that mindset. And today I am going to be starting a sort of a series, a very long series, but with lots of short little episodes about creating a strategic plan because I think this is something I know, I'm 100 % certain, this is something that a lot of entrepreneurs miss.
So we've all heard of a business plan. We all know what that means or we have an idea of what that means. And I think most of the time we imagine that means something with lots of numbers, something with a lot of data, very like analytical, very boring. But what I am proposing to you is that you don't do a business plan that you focus on a strategic plan and it is different. And the reason that it's different is because it's less analytical and more foundational. And by that I mean, when you're building a strategic plan, it's sort of the blueprint for where you want to take your business for the next however long you decide that strategic plan covers. So I like to suggest doing a three month strategic plan and you can even do it monthly, but I think three months is kind of a sweet spot. And maybe as your business grows, you extend that or.
Will you find what works best for you and for your industry and for your business and for your team perhaps? But starting with a small chunk of time, because a lot of that stuff is going to kind of carry over to maybe the next time you go through this process. So I have created a template for you, a free template called the Simple Strategic Plan. And it's the most beautiful Google Doc template you'll have ever seen. You can find it and download it yourself at dustyhegge .com slash strategy.
And it's a simplified free version of my complete strategic plan template, which you can grab in the shop at dustyhegge.com/shop if you want the fuller, more robust version.
But for the sake of today, we're just going to start going through the simple version of this strategic template because I really believe that it is these simple things that you need at first to build a strong foundation for a business that doesn't leave you feeling like so frustrated or overworked or underpaid or overwhelmed or stressed or feeling like you're sacrificing kingdom values in order to reach this arbitrary goal. I don't want that for you. And I have been in that sort of stuck place with my wheels spinning out for an embarrassingly long time. Even though I have gotten to see incredible results for my clients, even though I have been blessed with opportunities to help a local nonprofit really incredibly grow in a very short period of time. their charitable donations and I got to lead the communications and got to lead their marketing and I got to play a really crucial role in quite a few businesses’ successes and growth and still, I was stuck like a vehicle with its wheels spinning out. My gas tank was loaded. I was so eager, so ready to gocbut there I was still stuck.
And if you're feeling like that, I cannot stress to you just how important this process of building a strategic plan really is. So head to dustyhegge.com/strategy. And I'm going to start working through piece by piece each of these little sections from the strategic plan.
We're going to go through the very first owner's intent and mission statement. And so these are two things that I think get missed, either completely missed altogether or misunderstood. So today we're just going to do owner's intent. We're going to do a mission statement probably another day, maybe tomorrow.
Your owner's intent is exactly what it sounds like.
Your owner's intent isn't necessarily your mission or your vision. So it's not like the why from an impact-driven place. It's the “why” you started your business from a practical place. Like did you maybe start a business to earn money?
Because my bet is you need money.
Right?
We all need money to live. We all need money to nurture our families, to take care of ourselves, to take care of our people, and to serve our clients really well. Like money is an essential, it is the lifeblood of a business in a lot of ways, in every way. You need money, right? And so why did you start your business and what amount of money do you need is kind of the crux that your owner's intent is built on. So I'm getting a little carried away here. Let me bring it back. So your owner's intent really isn't your missionary vision, but it will...
impact your mission and your vision. So your owner's intent is the practical aspect of why you started your business. It's not so much who you want to serve and why, but how can your business serve you?
So for example, did you start your business to grow and scale it really fast so that you can sell it?
Or maybe you started your business like me so that you can build sustainable wealth to bless your family, reach financial goals, to be able to contribute to your family's income to be able to continue to give generously?
Or maybe did you start your business to become an industry leader? You want to be a mega big name in the industry and you don't necessarily want to sell it right away, but you envision selling it down the road, but you want it to grow really fast?
Maybe you started your business as a hobby and you don't necessarily need really high profit margins? You don't necessarily need it to be a really regular amount of income. Right now you're in a hobby business stage.
None of these reasons are bad reasons to start a business. Like seriously, if you started your business because you want to buy a red Ferrari, and that is why practically speaking, you started your business and how it impacts you, that's just fine. I just need you to be honest with yourself about it and to own it.
And I need you to bring that intention to the Lord. I need you to surrender it at His feet and say, okay God, this is what I'm hoping to accomplish through my work here. Let your will be done in this.
Change my will to match your will so that way I can actually do the good work that I know you've called me and you've sent me here and you've blessed me and honored me with to be able to enact, to be able to walk out. So for your owner's intention,
I want you to think through practically speaking, why did you start your business and why, what is your business doing to serve you? That is kind of the heart of what an owner's intent is. And everything else is kind of be built on that because like I mentioned earlier, the way that a person who is trying to grow their business really, really fast to sell fast is going to be very different than the way I think most of us our intention in building a business.
My guess is the majority of you guys listening who are service providers, who are coaches, who are creatives, it's probably more so to build wealth for your family, to build a sustainable income. And the way that you're gonna go about building your business is very different. And every decision that follows is very different.
What often happens, and what certainly was happening to me, is that we make business decisions as if we are gonna grow and scale fast. When reality, my actual owner's intent, my actual intention, speaking for myself in growing my business, is to build sustainable wealth for my family. I should say, in my case, the way that I worded my own owner's intent is to build sufficient wealth because my goal isn't a nine-figure business. I'm not here to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, I'm here to earn a sufficient income to supplement my husband's income so that I can really bless my family and help us to reach our own internal family goals that God has given us.
And so whatever that is for you, please know there isn't a right or a wrong unless it's out of alignment with what God's will is. But I'm gonna trust that you're gonna take this to the Lord and you're gonna go through this process. So when you download the simple, free version of the strategic plan at dustyhegge.com/strategy. In one of the very first sections in the foundational section, you'll see, I give you a little bit more information about owner's intent there. A couple of really great resources to help you kind of really think through that and a few follow-up questions to help you clarify that intention.
But at the end of the day, this has to be something you bring to the Lord. At the end of the day, so much of these decisions and what allows us as Christian entrepreneurs to do, woo, what a tongue twister there, to do business differently is that for us, for the Christian entrepreneur, success isn't fast cash. For us, success isn't hundreds of followers. For us, success isn't even necessarily like, a small amount of income. For us, as Christian entrepreneurs, success is obedience to the Lord. End of story. Because you are not responsible for the outcome. All you are responsible for is to faithfully walk in obedience to the Lord, even when it doesn't make sense. Even when it doesn't make sense, my friend.
Okay, so that is my little pep talk for you as we wrap up this episode on Owner's Intent. If you have any questions at all, I really would love to hear from you. You can find me on Instagram at @dustyhegge and grab that strategic template because I do think it's going to be helpful.
We are going to be going through it over the next probably couple of months. So it'll be cool for you to be able to download it and go along through it. You can binge that content and go right on ahead in through the strategic template because I have like a little explanation of each section for you and some further resources depending on the section but we're gonna be going through a mission statement next. Thanks for hanging out with us. I'll see you next time!
