SHEcorporated One Step Empire

Step Four - Finding Your Unfair Advantage

June 03, 2021 Kristy Carruthers Season 1 Episode 4
SHEcorporated One Step Empire
Step Four - Finding Your Unfair Advantage
Show Notes Transcript

This week things get strategic.

Are you ready to find your secret sauce that is going to skyrocket your sales?  That special thing that gives you an unfair advantage over your competition?

Then you need to do a SWOT.

What the hell is a SWOT, you ask?

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

And it's one of the quickest ways to find opportunities that you can use to grow your business exponentially.

At the end of the podcast, we are sending you off to get your free download and complete your own SWOT, until next week, when we meet back here, to move to Step 5 on your road to a wildly successful business.

This is the ONE STEP Empire podcast from SHEcorporated.  We are here to help YOU take the leap, and create the life you dream of, by building your own business empire, one simple step at a time.

Make sure you visit us at SHEcorporated.com for any downloads we mention in the podcast. You can also join our community HERE 

Ready to SMASH Your Goals?   We're here to help!

Make this the year that changes EVERYTHING.  

Now offering limited spots in our full day “Done with You” Success Blueprint Days  for personalized marketing and strategy to propel you to your biggest year ever!

CLICK TO:  BOOK MY DAY



Episode FOUR

 

Welcome back to SHEcorporated ONE STEP Empire podcast!

If you’ve been following along each week and doing the homework, you now will have a solid business idea and a plan to test it, by offering a minimum viable product to your market.  You will also have a solid understanding of your target audience and three of your best customers and their habits, lifestyle and preferences all drawn out on paper.

If you have no idea what I am talking about, then you need to go back to episode one and start from the beginning, as each episode builds on the last and your business is building exactly the same way.

Go on – we’ll wait……

 

Okay – so last week we talked through how to determine your target audience and create your buyer persona’s.

This week things get strategic.

 Are you ready to find your secret sauce, that is going to skyrocket your sales?  That special thing that gives you an unfair advantage over your competition?

Then you need to do a SWOT.

What the hell is a SWOT you ask?

 SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

 And it's one of the quickest ways to find opportunities that you can use to grow your business exponentially.

A SWOT analysis is a framework used to evaluate where your company stands among the competition, and in the marketplace and helps you develop your strategy moving forward. 

By looking at the internal strengths and weaknesses of your company, you can identify areas that need work, as well as those that give you a unique value proposition for your customers.

Externally, you can look at your competitors as well as the market conditions, and examine needs that may not be currently filled for your customers, trends that you can take advantage of, and so much more.

We get so caught up in the every day running of our business, that it’s really critical to take a step back and have a good look at where we are, what we might be missing, and where we have opportunities to improve.

  

So how do you do your own SWOT analysis?

We have put together a free worksheet for you and linked it on our site that will help – just go to shecorporated.com and look for the link on the header bar and download it.

The free download also has the grid that breaks down what types of things would be included in each section of your SWOT.

But let’s talk through it here as well:

 

Strengths – Internal factors

What does your company do well?

What do you do better or differently than your competitors?

What assets do you have, like special processes, owned property or capital, or proprietary software?

What internal resources do you have, like skilled workers, efficient processes, low overhead?


Weaknesses – Internal Factors 

What needs improvement?

What your competitors do better or differently than you do?

What resources do you lack?

What internal weaknesses do you have, like low quality training, poor morale, or gaps in your processes?

 

Opportunities – External or Internal

What changes in the market are positive for your company? Is there increasing need?

What is the competition doing that you can capitalize on, or is there lack of competition?

Are there markets that are under served?

Is there technology you can utilize to improve efficiency, reduce costs, improve service etc?


Threats – External or Internal 

Is the market trending away from your product or service?

Is there new competition arriving in your market?

Are there changing regulations that affect your company or customers in a negative way?

Is there negative media coverage?

 

Get it on Paper

So you’ll want to go through and write down your answers for each of the four parts.  The examples I have given you may not apply exactly to your business, and there may be many others that do apply that I didn't touch on.  Go through each section and fill it out as it best applies to your specific situation.

 

How to Act Upon Your SWOT Analysis

Now what?

After you have completed your analysis, you need to go through all of your answers and act on them.

The first one and the easiest to figure out next steps for, is your strengths, because essentially, you’re already doing them.

So really, it’s just “do more of what you’re already good at.”

If your strength is excellent customer service – then keep your staff engaged and motivated, and keep the systems in place for training or processes that have gotten you where you are, and improve where possible.


Minimizing your weaknesses

Acting on the weaknesses you identified in your SWOT analysis is often a bit more challenging, but just as important.

You’ll want to have a good look at your weaknesses and see which you can correct, and how you can compensate for others.  For example, if you had a small family owned pizza restaurant and let’s say that a weakness you identified was that your competitors, mostly large chains, had delivery service.  You may not ever be able to afford delivery drivers, but perhaps you can offer something extra with all takeout orders, or make it really easy for your customers to pickup their orders with a curbside service. 


Seizing Opportunities

The opportunities section of your SWOT analysis is the part that always gets me the most excited. This is where you will find things like holes in the market and opportunities to grow market segments. Your opportunities list is a great way to move the needle, often with some very small changes.

Have a look at those opportunities on your list, and figure out how to take advantage of them.  For example, let’s say you are producing organic baby food and you have noticed a big increase in the demand for organic foods in new markets that you aren’t already serving.  That’s an opportunity to figure out how to get in front of that market, or find a way to make your product appeal to that new demographic, with a special line or marketing that will appeal to them.

 

Mitigating Threats

Mitigating the threats you find, is often the most difficult part of your SWOT analysis, because these factors are mostly external and you will have limited control over them.  But responding to the threats should be your top priority, even if they seem out of your control.  You’ll need to make changes that are IN your control, in order address each threat.

So for example, let’s say you produce a clothing line, and a threat on your list is that your supply chain for the fabric you use is unreliable because of shipping issues from overseas.  You can't do anything about shipping delays, but you could look at sourcing from a more local supplier, or adding a new collection to your clothing line, with a different fabric sourced from elsewhere, to diversify your supply chain.

 

So that’s your one step for this week.  This is one exercise that will really set you up for success and give you some insight into opportunities that can give your business the edge it needs to be a success, right out of the gate.

So get the free download – go to shecorporated.com and look for the link in the header where it says SWOT, do your analysis and see what opportunities are waiting for you!

 Next week is a fun one – we are going to work on your success mindset, do some “I am” affirmations, and get dreaming to clarify your vision for your new life and business. 

 

So hit us up @shecorporated on social and we’ll see you back here next week.