The Surprising Strategy Lesson I Learned in a Room Full of Warfighters
Before I ever coached founders through rebuilding their business models…
Before I ever led leadership development programs at Boeing…
My very first job out of college was something most people are surprised to hear.
I facilitated strategic decision-making workshops for the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy.
My job was to help military leaders imagine what their servicemen and women might face in the future, everything from geopolitical shifts to emerging threats to technological leaps, and then guide them through identifying where the gaps were, how critical each gap was, what risks they posed, and what solutions needed to be prioritized first.
It was high-stakes, deeply analytical work that required two things:
A clear-eyed assessment of reality… and the courage to plan for an uncertain future.
Those early years shaped how I think about strategy in every context. From leadership, change management, business growth, visibility, and now the work I do with founders.
They also taught me that you can’t lead effectively if you don’t first understand where you truly are, you can’t grow if you won’t acknowledge your gaps, and perhaps most importantly, you can’t build a future if you don’t prioritize the things that matter most.
Later, when I oversaw the management and execution of more than 100 global leadership development programs at Boeing, that same mental model followed me. As a team, we were always asking:
What is the current state of the company? The leaders? The team?
What competencies are missing?
What are the risks of not addressing them?
What strategic direction will set all the players up for long-term success?
It was only when I left corporate and started working with female founders that I realized this exact process, the one used to prepare military leaders and Fortune 500 executives, is what entrepreneurs desperately need too.
This time, the stakes are a bit different but no less important. Instead of protecting national security or managing multi-billion-dollar programs, you’re protecting your mission, your livelihood, and your team.
And unlike in those military workshops or in a big company, where someone else hands you the priorities and the plan, you have the freedom to forge your own path.
You get to build that clarity yourself.
That’s where the S.T.R.A.T.E.G.Y. Method comes in.
It’s the framework I built by blending everything I learned in those early rooms with the very real challenges high-achieving founders face today, things like the friction of success, the weight of growth, and the pressure to realign without burning everything down.
Every time I teach this framework, founders stop running their businesses reactively… and start leading it strategically.
Let’s break it down together.
State of Your Business
One of the biggest mistakes founders make is believing strategy starts with goals.
It doesn’t. It starts with clear eyes and a healthy dose of truth and perspective.
This means taking a clear, unfiltered look at:
your business numbers and performance
where revenue actually comes from
the patterns in your client pipeline
the offers that carried the business
the places where systems cracked under pressure
how you actually feel about what you’re doing
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve talked a lot about the friction of success. This last bullet is important because as you saw, friction isn’t just operational; it’s also deeply emotional.
If you’re feeling misaligned, resentful, drained, boxed-in, or uninspired, that is data, and ignoring that data is how we drift into burnout or build businesses that no longer reflect who they are.
Your State of the Business review should be equal parts:
Data-driven
Soul-driven
Impact-driven (your version of the triple bottom line — profit, people, planet)
If you’ve been operating on autopilot or hanging on by wing and prayers, this is your invitation to take stock of where things really are in the business, and use that data as you move forward with intention.
Thrive In Life
When I left corporate, I promised myself I would never again allow work to dictate my life. All those years ago, I remember the pain of feeling like my family was fraying around the edges. I was working all the time, on someone else’s schedule and priorities, and my family, especially my littles, were suffering.
Yet so many founders do exactly that… unintentionally, when we are knee-deep in the bowels of our business.
This step in the framework is where you check in with the human - YOU - running the business. Ask yourself:
What season of life are you in?
What does your capacity actually look like? Get brutally honest with yourself here.
What personal goals, family responsibilities, or health needs must be honored? This is especially important if you’re bearing the load of aging parents while also raising children.
What does freedom mean to you right now? Fulfillment? Impact? Again, get specific and what these things actually mean to you.
You can grow a business two ways:
By squeezing yourself harder or by designing it to support the life you want.
The second way is sustainable… and the first way is a straight line to burnout, and resentment.
Revisit Your Business Design
I often think this is where the fun really begins in this process. The first two steps are all about getting clear on the head and the heart of the business. But this is where we get to look at the guts of the business and decide if it’s working for us, and why/not.
Here, we look at everything from your offers to your pricing, your delivery models and the systems and tools you need to sustain it, the client experience you create, you and your team’s operational capacity, and the alignment (or misalignment) with your next-level vision.
This is where we ask the hard questions:
Is this business model built for where you’ve been… or where you're going?
Are your offers scalable, sustainable, and strategically positioned?
Are your systems supporting your growth, or slowing you down?
Is your model profitable and purpose-aligned? We believe you can be both!
Does any of this still energize you?
This is often where founders discover they’ve outgrown the architecture of the business they built ages ago, and the door is wide open for new possibilities.
Aim High
Once you understand where you are and what needs to evolve, we get to define where you’re going. Setting ambitious goals is the jet fuel that propels the business forward.
Instead of setting goals from pressure, comparison, or random guesses, you set goals that align with:
The triple bottom line:
Profit: the fuel that sustains your life, your business, and your mission
People: the human side of your work, including equity, well-being, and your team
Planet: how your operations and decisions impact the world you operate within
It’s also where your personal convictions, the deeper reasons behind your work, in this next season show up.
It probably won’t come as any surprise, but I deeply believe that when impact and profitability coexist, you create a strategy that is sustainable, meaningful, and magnetic.
Tailoring Your Marketing and Sales Strategies
This is where visibility and traction come into play. Given everything you now know about your updated direction, we design a marketing and sales plan that actually serves it.
This includes refining your message to match your new clarity, identifying the right audience for this version of your work (and yes, you can make big shifts here), showing up where your people are already paying attention, clarifying your sales process so it feels ethical, aligned, and effective, and creating content aligned with your conviction (your strongest differentiator).
When I shifted from general “business coaching” to conviction-driven strategy for high-achieving female founders, everything had to shift. I tightened up my message, increased my visibility in places like Linkedin and on relevant stages and communities, and my audience (some old, some new) responded immediately because the clarity was unmistakable.
That’s what this step does, and you cannot run an effective business without this level of clarity and alignment.
Engineering Weekly Plans
The planner in me thrives on actual plans. In order for me to effectively run my business, delegate to the team, and spend my time where it’s most needed, I need to reverse engineer my weekly plan from the larger initiatives.
I break my work down into quarterly (90 day) cycles, and then into monthly milestones, weekly commitments (no Monday morning freakout over what to do that week), and a daily focus.
This is how you turn ambition into results without burning out. It’s not about doing more. As they say, it’s about doing the right things consistently.
Get Moving
All of the above planning is great, but let’s be real. A plan is only good if it’s executed, and this is where founders often fall off the wagon. Not because they’re unmotivated, but because they’re isolated.
Accountability isn’t a luxury; it’s a strategic advantage. Getting moving becomes dramatically easier when you have:
a coach who sees the big picture
peer support from aligned founders
trusted advisors who challenge your assumptions
a rhythm of check-ins that keeps you moving
someone to help you course-correct before you drift too far
Those business owners that have great momentum aren’t unicorns; they’re simply supported.
What supports do you need to effectively run your business?
Your CEO Time
This step is non-negotiable. CEO Time is the dedicated weekly time on your calendar where you step out of the weeds and into the role of leader.
It’s where you review your plan, evaluate the performance of your business, including the leading and lagging measures that give you critical insight into what’s working and what’s not, conduct an alignment check-in, identify where you need additional support, and plan for the week and month ahead.
This is the hour that moves mountains in my business, and I know it’s one of the best ways to help your business grow without losing yourself in the process.
Ready to pull it all together?
I wrap this up by sharing something that I have seen prove consistently true whether I was helping the U.S. military plan for future missions, supporting executives through leadership transformation, or guiding founders through business realignment.
Strategy is simply the courage to face where you are and decide what comes next.
If this year has been a wild roller coaster and you’re feeling the friction of success, misalignment, or ready to create some stability in order to move forward, this is your moment to step into it with clarity.
We begin with a Strategic Clarity Call where we map out what’s no longer working, what your next season is asking of you, and the strategic shifts that will get you there, sustainably, powerfully, and in full alignment with who you are now.
If you’re ready for that next level, book your Strategic Clarity Call.
