You became a knowledge professional or creative knowledge expert because you want to help others. You want to make an impact, you want to add value and help people get the best out of themselves, doing what gives you satisfaction. You started with full courage and enthusiasm, but when you look back now, you do not feel that you have made a real impact. Your business is running, your clients are satisfied, yet you feel there is more to it and you need to take a new step. You want to grow, to do more, but don't really know HOW.

Me, Gerdi Hulsink, spent 20 years doing marketing, sales and business development for large international corporate companies. Until I decided to use all my knowledge as a Business Strategist, to start helping ambitious entrepreneurs like you. In this blog I take you through how you can start making more impact.

What is it anyway, making an impact? 

Let's start at the beginning: what is making an impact? In dictionaries such as Van Dale the word impact is described as follows: influence, effect or effect. So with impact, you want to influence or effect something or someone. You want to make a difference. A soccer coach wants to motivate his team to play their best during a game so that the game is won.

As a Business Strategist, I want you as an entrepreneur to do what energizes you, what makes you tick and to be successful at it. How? By helping you with a distinctive position in the market and a profitable growth strategy. This is how you, as an ambitious knowledge professional, lift your company to a higher level.

How can you make an impact as an entrepreneur? 

Impact as an entrepreneur starts with yourself and with your focus. You have to start living and doing business on your own terms again, doing what energizes you and what makes you happy. So start looking at the foundation and get back to basics. Because if you don't know who you're doing it for and why, you won't get anywhere. So ask yourself:

• Who do you want to make an impact for? Who is your target audience? 
• What sets you apart, what makes you unique? 
• How can you ensure that you remain distinctive?
• What is your marketing machine? How are you going to sell the product effectively?
• Will your mental - and physical energy ensure that you can make a difference?

Who do you want to make an impact for? 

So the first step is to start looking at who your target audience is. Who do you want to make an impact for? Are they ambitious entrepreneurs, knowledge professionals, start-ups or ambitious women? You can't and don't have to help everyone. Determine who your target audience is so you can best help them. Choose and you will be chosen. When you don't choose, you won't be chosen.

What makes you different from the rest?

Now you come to the point about yourself. What makes you so unique? What sets you and your company apart from your competitors? Perhaps you are always available on weekends and evenings, you have certain knowledge that others know very little about. Or that you don't mince your words and therefore dare to challenge people in high positions. Or you are an insane inspiration to others. Whatever it is, there is something that makes you and your business unique. Discover what that is and act on it. This is a component that also comes back to personal branding. 

How do you make sure you remain distinctive from the rest?

There is competition in every field. But you can always stay ahead of your competitors by being and staying distinctive. So you have to innovate and keep a close eye on the market. How do you keep up in a market that is constantly changing? How do you keep meeting the newer needs and demands of your customers? For example, you can find out what new methods have been developed in order to learn more about them. But also follow a certain study or go to a congress. Anything that keeps you growing as a person. 

A clearly distinctive positioning and a profitable growth strategy should not be lacking because: 

• Market demands for innovation and change
• Your value proposition is no longer distinctive 
• Your industry calls for attention to innovation 
• You in entrepreneurship crave a solid new boost
• You want to grow to a new higher level, both privately and professionally

Create a strong marketing machine

Your product or service can be as good as it is, if you're not visible you won't sell. It's that simple. Make sure you create a marketing machine that allows you to perform and sell effectively. 

Take care of your mental - and physical energy

Admittedly, most people are quite capable of continuing on their gums for a while. The only question is whether this is a sustainable approach. When you are not mentally and physically fit, you leak energy. Your concentration is lower and you therefore do not perform as you would like and can. As a Business Strategist, I think it is extremely important that you also work on your health. This can be in the form of mental and physical health. 

Get moving

Based on the aforementioned questions, draw up a strategy with objectives. After all, how are you going to make the desired impact? Right, by taking targeted steps. In doing so, make a decision, not an intention. You want to become the best-known wedding photographer in the Netherlands within three years. Or, as a web builder, you want entrepreneurs to get 20 percent more requests because of your work. 

Then determine what steps you will take to achieve these goals. The next step is to lay out concrete actions. But remember this: it has nothing to do with working as hard as possible. No, you are much better off achieving success in a sustainable way, in your effectively simple own way. Because entrepreneurship is top sport. In movement lies growth. That means you have to blaze at the times you need to score and also rest when you need to recover. 

Some more tips: this is how to make an impact

If you want to make an impact, it's good to remember the following: 

• Get your focus
• Track your progress, reflect and adjust your strategy as needed
• Think in possibilities, think big. Nothing is impossible, the word says it all: I'm possible. You are capable of great things.
• Develop your own unique style, your distinctiveness
• Let so many people know about your mission
• Enlist the help of people who inspire you to be the best you can be. Alone you go faster, together you go further

And above all, don't forget to laugh and have fun. Making an impact is not just serious business; above all, you get to have fun. 

Making an impact with an insanely good strategy

To make an impact, you need others. Others who point you in the right direction, the direction that you yourself can no longer see through tunnel vision. Others who motivate you, challenge you and encourage you to get the best out of yourself. Who work with you to create a profitable strategy with goals for the coming years. As a Business Strategist, I would like to help you take your business and your life to the next level. So that you can spend your time on the things that matter and profitably grow in impact, turnover and freedom.