DAY 28

[Former_Member]

Today's Task: Make a list of business strengths and weaknesses. Make plan to improve, add to business plan.

[S]trengths, [W]eaknesses, [O]pportunities, [T]hreats = SWOT.

Just how important is this step? During my university studies for my Business degree, the SWOT analysis is the one thing you could depend on having in every. single. class. This is absolutely a pen and paper (or MSWord/Excel) exercise. You can try to do it in your head, but I guarantee you're going to miss something, and it could be something big.

Section your list into 4 corners.
Upper Left is Strengths.
Upper Right is Weaknesses
Lower Left is Opportunities
Lower Right is Threats

Start listing your business's strengths. This can be skills you bring to the table, conditions in the market that are allowing your business to thrive, some key unique advantage your particular product or method has. From big to small strengths, write them ALL down. Temporary or permanent. If they strengthen your business, they belong here.

Now go to weaknesses. Dig deep. Personality quirk that seems to continuously thwart your organizational efforts, sudden new influx of identical products making you no longer unique, too-expensive materials preventing a decent profit margin. Again - nothing it too big or too small to put in this column. Focus on the weakness itself, not the result. You want this to be a "cause" column.

Now we're supposed to come up with a plan. But how do you do that? You've had a vague idea of your strengths and weaknesses all along. If you knew what to do with them, they wouldn't vague anymore, right? Here's where the other 2 columns come into play.

Remember that "So what?" question from earlier in the month? We're going to use that to show how our Strengths and Weaknesses present our Opportunities and Threats.

Look at your Strengths and then consider what Opportunities those particular strengths might lend themselves to. Have a strength of awesome suppliers and rock bottom materials costs? You have an opportunity of breaking into wholesale markets because you have more room to adjust profit margins. Have a strength of ultra organized work space? You have an opportunity of leveraging that open space and strong organizational skills to find better time efficiencies in your production. Go through each of your strengths and combinations of strengths and just keep asking yourself "So what?" What's the use of that strength? Defend yourself against being your own devil's advocate and I'll bet you discover some opportunities you didn't know were just waiting to be tackled.

Look at your Weaknesses. Again, line by line, "so what?" I have a weakness of getting sucked into my social media marketing to the point of losing significant time in my day. So what? I've just created a threat of significant time inefficiencies, which results in slowed production, and ultimately, leads to customer dissatisfaction. My weakness of not limiting social media has a direct threat of customer dissatisfaction over late shipping times.

Got all that down? S, W, O, and T columns filled in and your vertical relationships defined? Now if you want to Level Up, look at your columns again and draw arrows going diagonally.
Now that you've identified threats to your business, look at your strengths and see where you can start plugging holes. What strengths do you have to fix those? What do you need to look to outside help for? What new skills development do you need to do in order to add the necessary strengths to counter those threats?
Look at your Opportunities. Look at your weaknesses. What opportunities might you miss because of a recognized weakness? Now that you know you could inadvertently become your own saboteur, what can you do to prevent getting in your own way?

You've now got some clear contributions to paths forward, goals you might not have realized are well suited to your situation, strategies for leveraging the market, and a statement of needs for what it will take to get there.

I don't know about you, but that's incredibly empowering for me!

[Former_Member]

Have mercy Magdalena, this ^^ is going to take some time. LOL

[BlackCrowCurios]

Valerie I'll start by placing you and the other team leaders in the upper left on my strengths list...

[TOMgirlApparel]

I am going to work on this a little by little all day. I never done this exercise!

I've got my four columns ready...

[Former_Member]

i did something like this a few years ago

i think i even wrote it down somewhere

"somewhere" was a weakness

i can do it again

[swaddlemesnugly]

...working on this, listing upper left and upper right items seems to be pretty straightforward. I think I'm mixing up the lower sections.

So, the OPPORTUNITIES section is actually a REMEDIES section?

...a sudden influx of identical products, that's a THREAT, yes? That needs a REMEDY? We use our STRENGTHS to craft a REMEDY?

Sorry, teach, I was the one in the class who always had to get the details nailed down before I could complete the assignment :-)

Absolutely, Black Crow :-)

[Former_Member]

Kelli,
The Strengths and Weaknesses are a simple snapshot of data.
So if you're looking at that sudden influx so you're no longer unique, that's not a threat - that's a current condition. The weakness is that you blend in to the overall market as one of many generic products in that search phrase. Weakness here = no unique identifier / nothing sets my product apart
If that had been recognized earlier, then the coming influx would've been seen as a threat and something unique could've been done ahead of time so that you'd stay above the rest instead of now trying to scramble out of a crowded mass. Does that make sense?

Not every item is going to line up to another item, either in your vertical comparison or your diagonals. But they can be helpful boxes to better explore each other. In the case of the mass influx, that's simply a weakness that now needs corrected. It does however create an opportunity for redefining yourself and adding a new twist that nails a niche for yourself.

A concrete example - mei tai baby carriers.
When I joined Etsy 1.5 years ago, there were other mei tai makers, but only 3-4 really stood out. I eventually gathered my share of the market and then solidified it with my Linen Luxe line. Nobody else is doing it.
Over the past 6 months, the baby carrier category has been FLOODED with new entrants. I still have my Linen line keeping me very competitive. I've turned it into a further opportunity by deciding to drop my simpler carriers that blend in with all this new competition and instead be the Linen and Geeked Out Carrier Lady. It's a strong niche and while there are others trying for the geeked out market, I have a good advantage because I've already started building a reputation.

So ID'd threat before it became a weakness, so I could instead build a strength that has now become even more opportunity.

[Former_Member]

And you're not looking so much for REMEDIES. It's not that one fixes the other, per se (though they may). Rather, it's digging around in how they combine to open new avenues for you.

A real life example from my analysis:

STRENGTHS
I have a real passion for making baby carriers
I have excellent craftsmanship
I'm knowledgable about different means of babywearing

Analysis:
Outcome: I'll open a baby carrier shop

******"So what?"***********
My craftsmanship sets above several other shops, looking at feedback.
My extended knowledge about other babywearing methods allows me to build a credible reputation in larger forums, also building name awareness of my shop.
I know enough and make a solid enough carriers that I can jump into bigger arenas in the babywearing community

OPPORTUNITY: Partnership with and sponsorship of high profile events hosted by industry-leading orgs like BWI and BCIA

[swaddlemesnugly]

Thanks, Val, I'm chewing on that. So today's list shouldn't contain the influx and the opportunities it presented, because the threat was identified in May and the opportunities to expand my product lines were acted upon. What I need to be listing today is a snapshot of TODAY. Got it.

Whenever I try to define what makes my products unique and desirable, I recall my older son's "So what?" question to me when I told him I was going to open a shop making and selling swaddling cloths. I asked him about trademarks, niches, that kind of thing. His response - "How can you trademark a square piece of cloth?!?" That is my challenge whenever I try to describe what is unique about my product. "But mine are..."

[swaddlemesnugly]

Wow, what a good exercise that was! It enabled me to identify the tasks I need to tackle, to create a presence on the internet, and clarified a project that I can do locally - this:

OPPORTUNITY: My Primary Care Provider just had her 2nd baby and was raving to me about the swaddles that I gave her. She suggested that I might have some success by going to the open Q&A sessions of the breastfeeding group and offering samples in connection with their swaddling classes. Partnership with and sponsorship of this group at a local hospital is a possibility. Each expectant mother would receive a free swaddle cloth to take home, that they used to swaddle their baby doll in class.

Now I'm energized! Thanks!

[Former_Member]

Yay, Kelli!

[VintageRescueSquad]

Kelli, what a great idea!

I'm gonna have to wait until the weekend to flesh this out (due to the accursed day job), but I'm thinking about it in the back of my brain….

[BlackCrowCurios]

Kelli that sounds like a great marketing opportunity for you and your blankets!

[TomboyPrettyJewelry]

I completed a basic SWOT Analysis and it helped a great deal in providing focus for the remainder of 2014 and looking forward. Essentially, I have been limiting myself - need to go bigger to gain the results sought.

[Former_Member]

Great realization, Kimberly!