Most Canadian independent businesses don't have a growth strategy. They have a wish list.

Income targets, ideal client descriptions, the kind of work they want to do — these are outcomes. They describe what you want growth to produce. They don't tell you which direction you're growing in, who you're competing against, or what it actually takes to win more of the market that already exists for what you do.

And without that directional decision, marketing becomes a series of disconnected efforts — each one pointed in a slightly different direction, none of them compounding into anything.

This is the first episode of Strategy First — a four-part series on the decisions that have to be made before marketing begins. Today's decision is the foundational one: which direction is your business actually growing?

Using Ansoff's Growth Matrix, this episode gives you the framework to answer that question — and to understand why the direction you've been assuming is probably not the strategy you've been executing.

After listening, you'll be able to:

• Identify which growth direction you've actually been pursuing — and whether it's the right one for where you are
• Recognise if you've been attempting a direction you don't have the resources to sustain
• Audit whether you have what Market Penetration — the right direction for most stabilised independent businesses — actually requires to work

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