Entrepreneurs: How to Decide What's Next

Rough Drafts by Cory Miller

One of the great questions we ask ourselves but can often haunt us as entrepreneur is: What's Next?

Asking "What's Next?" is a great exercise to keep us focused on protecting and growing our businesses.

For me, it was about staying relevant in the market and to our customers well into the future. And taking the right steps to ensure our future.

I did this "What's Next?" exercise often .... here's how it'd go:

FIRST, I started with assessing our current situation.

Where are we now? Our customers, our products, our competition?

SECOND, I started pushing Fast Forward on it all .... and asked, "Where is it all going next?"

To help look into the future ... I'd take those buckets ... customers, products, competition, technology, industry, etc ... and would go ... what would 10X better be for all of it?

What's the natural progression of all of this? And I'd play it all out.

Hockey great Wayne Gretzky is often quoted that his key to success was that he "skated to where the puck would be, not to where it had been."

And from this exercise typically I could see clearer for where the puck was going .... and I'd have 1-3 clear priorities to focus on steer our way forward and "create our future."