“Pick a Lane” – Identifying Your True Strategic Priorities

In this episode of The Strategy Sessions series, Ashley Carlson and Nichole Hughes tackle one of the most challenging aspects of business growth: deciding what deserves your attention and what does not.

As businesses gain momentum, opportunities begin to multiply. New offers, marketing initiatives, systems, hiring decisions, and exciting ideas all compete for attention. While none of these opportunities are inherently bad, pursuing too many at once can create fragmentation and stall progress.

Ashley and Nichole discuss why business owners often resist narrowing their focus, how strategic prioritization actually accelerates growth, and why focusing on one or two key initiatives can create greater momentum than trying to do everything at once. They also share practical strategies for identifying bottlenecks, using data to set priorities, and leveraging tools such as the Eisenhower Matrix to separate urgent tasks from important ones.

If you've ever felt overwhelmed by competing priorities or struggled to decide what to do next, this episode will help you gain focus, align your decisions, and move your business forward with intention.

✨ Takeaways

• Growth happens when vision meets structure.
• Business owners often struggle because they have too many ideas, not too few.
• Trying to pursue everything at once creates fragmentation and slows progress.
• Focusing on one or two initiatives creates momentum and meaningful results.
• Identifying bottlenecks helps reveal where attention is needed most.
• Data from current operations can guide strategic decision-making.
• The Eisenhower Matrix helps distinguish urgent tasks from important priorities.
• Strategic pauses allow businesses to strengthen their foundation before scaling further.
• Saying no becomes easier when priorities are clearly defined.
• The fastest-growing businesses focus on aligned work, not simply more work.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Delegation Download Podcast, where business owners, CEOs, and leaders learn to work smarter, not harder.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

We're your hosts, Nicole Hughes and Ashley Carlson, here to share real stories, expert tips, and simple strategies to help you delegate with confidence and grow your business with support.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Because you can do anything, but not everything. Welcome back to the strategy sessions, mapping the business you actually want series. In this series, we're walking you through how we approach strategic mapping at Elevate, the exact framework we use to take scattered ideas and turn them into aligned action. Because growth doesn't happen by accident, it happens when vision meets structure. Whether you're planning your next quarter or your next five years, this series will help you think bigger, lead better, and execute smarter. In our last episode, we talked about defining your vision. And today we're getting into something that sounds simple, but is honestly one of the hardest parts of strategy.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

That's right. And more importantly, what not to focus on because many business owners don't have a lack of ideas. They just have too many. So Ashley, I would love to start off the conversation today, picking your brain a little bit. When you think about the clients that we work with, where do you see this show up the most?

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Yeah, I think that it almost always shows up right after a growth phase when the business has momentum, opportunities are coming in, and suddenly everything is possible. So this looks like a lot more yes opportunities, right? Yes to new offers, yes to a new marketing strategy, hiring, systems updates, content initiatives, things like that, but it's all happening at the same time. So on their own, none of these are bad decisions, but together they do tend to pull the business in a ton of different directions.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Yeah, absolutely. And it's it's such a good way to put it that it's so like fragmentation, right? So it's not because they're doing the wrong things, they're just doing too many things at once. And that's why we have our slogan, you can do anything, but not everything.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Right. And I think that as a result of getting excited about all the things, you actually aren't able to give your full attention to one thing actually succeeding. And we've been there at Elevate. We've been there where we have too many things happening at once and we've needed to hone it down and really make sure we're just focusing on one, maybe two things at a time. So that way there's momentum and our focus isn't split. And I often actually, you know, like describe it to people of the buckets in your business. There's because people will have all those things that I just mentioned going on when your business is a baby business. But and you're able to do all those things well. And then suddenly, like I said, when it becomes growth, now all those buckets require more of your time and energy. So you're not going crazy. I think that you know, every bucket that was possible in all these different areas of your business in the beginning, they were just smaller. Now these buckets are bigger, there's more people, more problems, which is a good thing. It means you're growing, but that is why continuing to focus on all the buckets just starts to become not possible. You won't be able to reach success or completion in all of it. You're just split too much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Do you think that there is a specific reason why people are so resistant to narrowing down their focus, or is it just a general thing that happens as a business owner?

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Yeah. And you know, it's funny is this is such a this is a question that I have advised people on. And I didn't truly experience it myself or recognize the resistance in myself until recently. I know we, like I said, we we just went through this. And I think that the reason why people tend to be resistant are you feel like you're limiting growth. You don't want to slow down. Things are so good. We have to keep going and say yes to all these things, right? And I think that when you have to say out loud, we're only going to focus on these couple of things this quarter, it really can feel like you might be closing the door to opportunities. Why, why would I want to do that? Right. But here's what I've seen over and over again with other businesses, and like I said recently ourselves, is that it actually isn't limiting growth at all. It's accelerating it. We, when chose to slim down our focuses for each of us, I noticed so much more momentum, so much more sense of completion. Like I noticed, like for all of us who we for at elevate, for those of you who don't know, we each own an initiative every quarter, right? Or a couple. And historically, we would own quite a few. Recently, we slimmed down to only own one or two things at a time. And that doesn't mean that all these other ideas aren't important and we're just putting them on the back burner. But what it means, and what I've seen is that we're actually able to truly get done in a week for you know, a lot of momentum on the one thing that we said we were gonna focus on. So we've been able to not have our attention so split. I think individually, all of us, and I'm I'm sure you could speak to this too about how it has felt for you having your initiatives be a little bit more focused. Cause I know all of us were a little bit hesitant to be like, what does this mean? What could this mean? This feels uncomfortable to say that I'm I'm putting this important thing. I'm not gonna pay attention to it right now. It feels difficult to say, I'm only gonna focus on these two things. But I think now that we've seen it in practice, it really has allowed us all to have that sense of completion and it feels really nice.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

It does for sure. And I mean, speaking from a non-business owner perspective, it was scary to say, okay, you're not going to have all of these things on your plate right now. And I'm like, no, they're all important. I need to get them all done. But it was an important shift that we had to make because it wasn't about doing less for the sake of doing less or cutting down on hours or not, you know, whatever the case may be. It was about doing the right things and having that intentional time and like really diving in deep to actually move those initiatives and the business forward. And I think that what it has also allowed us to do is to have those deeper conversations within those initiatives. Before when we had so many things on our plate, it was like, well, where is this? I don't know. It's just not moving forward. I don't know why. There's just so many things going on. But when we really narrowed it down to having one or two, we were able to pull back the curtain for lack of a better term and say, okay, this is where it's stuck. This is where I need help. This is where we need to think about it a little bit differently or pivot because this is not where we want it to go. And so we were able to be more intentional about what we were doing, when we were doing it, and how we were doing it, because all of those things matter when you're trying to move the needle forward. You can't have everything move forward at the same time. So I think if somebody is listening and they're thinking, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. Like if I if I don't know what to do, what to prioritize, then where do I start? Right. Like that's a really great question. So where would you start out? If you were to give that advice to somebody, where would you start?

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Yeah, I think looking at the bottlenecks, where where are things getting stuck? Like you said, really taking time to look at where are things breaking down or getting delayed, that is your clearest signal. So, for example, if clients are getting frustrated, you're consistently getting, you know, some feedback that maybe things aren't going the way they should or that you want them to, I think that means we're gonna focus all of our initiatives on client experience, find out where things are breaking and let's let's fix it. If projects are consistently late, maybe there's an operational efficiency issue. And that that was our experience, is that we were constantly stretching the timelines of projects. And that's when we realized that it was probably because we were just working on little bits of too many. So then therefore, all of them, their deadlines had to constantly get pushed. And so we tried, tried out. Like, who know, it might have not worked, but we tried it out of hey, let's let's try instead, let's focus on one or two and only focus on those two. And then once those are done, then we move on to the next. And I think that that has worked really well for us. But that was that was our bottleneck that we realized was happening and that we needed to reevaluate. Um, and then I think also we've talked about it a lot here. If you are doing everything yourself, then there is delegation, team development type of opportunity there. So we definitely advocate for that and making sure that you aren't the one doing everything and not and feeling like you're not getting what needs to get done because you're so bogged down by the unnecessary things. So I think you're just paying attention to where the pain points are. They are going to point you directly to where needs attention, where it needs to become a priority, where the the problem solving, if you will, needs to be. So you don't have to guess. You just have to pay attention.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Yeah, and it's it's definitely more of a practical and a strategic way of looking at what you have on your plate. Instead of guessing, you're actually using what's already happening in the business and you're using the data from what's already happening to determine what you need to focus on first.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Yeah, absolutely. I think once you start seeing the patterns, you can also start grouping them into pillars too. So you might start seeing patterns that all are surrounding revenue growth or, like we said, operational efficiency, team development. If you might need to either hire or train your team, maybe, like we said, it's client experience, or maybe it's marketing, maybe it's your brand, your messaging. People just aren't quite understanding what you do. So it does, there is an ability to gather the pain points into some sort of pillar. And I think that that usually is common, but the goal is to just not pick all of them to tackle at once.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Yeah, they're all important. We know that, but they're not all, they're not all urgent at the same time. I know we use the Eisenhower matrix system here at Elevate with a lot of our projects and just the things that we have on our plate. And so it's it's really looking at what you have on your plate, determining what needs what is super important that needs to be done now, what's important but can wait, what's not important and can wait, or what's not important at all. And you really can just ditch it. Like you just have to look at everything and decide what is the priority at that moment.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Yeah, exactly. You're just choosing what matters in this season of your business. And I think that it's I think one one hesitation that I see and that I know we have felt as well is that it's okay if we're saying that right now this is the most important thing. This is the most important piece of what we need to focus on in this season and then move the other things. You're not deleting them, you're just moving them to the parking lot. They'll still be there. We're not losing them forever. I think that I like we all need that reassurance, right? That it's still written down somewhere. That idea will still be there. We're just not going to tackle it right now. So I think just having it be somewhere that you know you haven't lost it forever is a nice little safety net, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Yeah, absolutely. And we use if you have a task management platform that you're using and we use clickup, and so we can create different statuses and all of that, or even if you're just using a Google Doc, like have a section that says parking lot so that if you're afraid if you don't write it down somewhere, it's going to get lost. Write it down in that parking lot section. Keep it there so that you can refer to that when you have completed what is important and you have started and completed your priorities. Um, and just keep that because you know it's there. Like you said, if you don't write it down and you feel like it's lost and it's just like living rent-free in your head and you never want that because there's always so many things up there. But we want to make sure that it's written down somewhere for you. Um, actually, once you have your priorities clear, you've determined what is the next step, what you're gonna focus on, what changes for a business owner?

SPEAKER_00 11:50

I think everything. I think uh your time, your team, your budget, the decisions you make, they all just start aligning around those priorities. I think be being able to say no to things becomes easier because you're more clear on where your focus is. You can say, not right now, because I'm really focused on this, or we are really focused on this. And so I think just being able to be super clear on the direction you're headed where your focus is actually makes say no a lot easier. I mean, I, for example, there's so many different groups that I'm in, and I get invited to different trainings and, you know, events and things like that. And I think that it makes it a lot easier for me to say no or to say I'll save the recording for another time when I know that that particular topic isn't what we need right now, but it might be a resource that I want down the road. So it just makes the no a lot easier. It makes the decision fatigue a lot lighter. So there's I mean, have we, I don't know if we've said enough positives of getting clear on these.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

I love that example that you used of, you know, saying not right now to the like the recording or the the workshop that you were invited to.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Some examples that I have seen are and experienced ourselves is pausing maybe a launch of an offer or a service that you were excited about. But once you really looked at, you know, because a lot of the times this is looking at things that are broken in your current foundation before you grow on to the next thing. And so you don't want to grow on to the next thing, add another new thing before the current foundation is strong. So just kind of remembering that of if you have to pause the launch, you're not saying no forever, you're just saying pause while we fix this, then we'll head back to it. Or maybe saying no to a marketing idea that isn't necessarily aligned. When you really look at it, it might seem bright and shiny and exciting, but it just isn't aligned with where you are right now, maybe financially, time-wise, maybe it's not even going to be speaking to the right people, but knowing where you need your attention, that no becomes easier. Or delaying a hire that maybe you just don't need right now. So I think that, like I said, this isn't a no forever. It's just not right now. I love that shift.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

And I think that it's important to have in all aspects, especially when you're doing strategic mapping and you're trying to figure out where your business is going to move forward. And I think that one question we really want listeners to think about is if you have narrowed down your focus to just the three top priorities for the next 90 days, what would they be? If you had to sit down and make that short list, what would your three priorities be for the next 90 days?

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Yeah, I think because the businesses that grow the fastest that we see out there, they're not doing the most work. They're just doing the most aligned work.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Thank you for joining this episode of the strategy sessions, mapping the business you actually want. If this conversation sparked something for you, we created a strategic mapping starter guide to help you take the first steps. It's not a full business plan template, it's a clarity tool, a way to pause, zoom out, and think strategically before you make your next move. You can download it by using the link in the show notes. And if you're ready to go deeper to build a fully aligned strategic map with real structure, ownership, and execution, make sure to book a clarity call with Ashley. And remember, you've got this.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Thanks for listening to the Delegation Download Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and follow us at Elevate V V Solutions for more tips to help you lead smarter and live better.