You want to be a successful person. You want to own a successful business. But can you really do both? The combination of a successful person and a successful business isn't the holy grail. Anyone can have this, but balanced success requires intentionality.

Back in the day, dealership agreements were territory-based. You were THE dealer for a product in a city. But, as the industry grew, they started dividing up those territories, making them smaller and smaller until there was no longer any territory — there were 2, 3, 4, or 40 dealers for the same product in the same city. So, dealers started adding more products as they lost territory. They assumed that more products equaled more value to the buyer. But it doesn’t. I doubt you can name anyone right now that is still doing this strategy successfully… except Amazon. Why? For the rest of us, product is not a strategy.

We ask these “what if” questions because they grant us insight. The more time we spend in these types of questions, the better understanding we’ll have about what our strategy needs to accomplish for us. These questions help us understand what people think us from the outside, a.k.a. our “branded perception.”

Developing a strong strategy begins by understanding what you’re already doing. With strategic questions, there are no wrong answers. There are just answers that guide us towards developing a strategy that works. So, think about how you handle new business opportunities as you answer these two questions:

Updating your strategy is no small task. In fact, it’s not really a task at all — it’s a journey. It’s more than a to-do item on a weekly agenda. Creating a strategy is a process of discovering who you are as a company and how to best serve your customers. If you want to update your strategy the right way, you need to answer these six questions about yourself and your organization before you get started.

Last September, a client asked me, “Tom, at the beginning of January, can you give me some resolutions for the upcoming year? I want to start 2019 off with a bang!” After thinking about it for a second, I asked him, “Why does everyone wait until the beginning of the year to write their New Year’s Resolutions? Let’s do it now!” As we talked through the resolutions, I realized just how relevant they are for all of my clients. And since “Resolution Season” is in full swing, it seems like the perfect time to share them with you. Here are the top 5 things you should do right now to kick off 2019.