Achieve greater personal, business and financial returns.

How can you maximize your impact and value by smartly focusing on what really matters? A challenge of many ambitious entrepreneurs - true multi-men* - with a lot of experience, expertise and value to offer. Known to work hard and have accomplished much with it. Now at a crossroads in their lives and/or careers and know that they want to share and multiply their value and impact, by not having to work harder (anymore), but rather by taking a smart and strategic different approach. 

As a highly educated, Multi-talented business woman in business or your own company, you have a wealth of value, ideas, skills and ambitions. But how do you turn all that potential into tangible results and sustainable growth? How can you harness and enhance your potential in a different way, and make your impact insightful? How can you really show what you have to offer and your contribution to the bottom line and its impact?

* "Multimens" - that nickname was once given to me by a client. And many of you, my loyal readers of these Empowered Letters, recognize yourselves in it. The bright minds, the quick thinkers, with a wealth of experience and an infinite potential for value to offer. Do you recognize yourself in this and are you perhaps at a crossroads right now? That you feel it's time to redefine your life and career. You are ready for that next step of growth - one based on your maximum value and impact. A step that not only delivers personal and business growth, but also brings financial peace, independence and freedom.

But how do you turn all that potential, all that experience and knowledge into tangible results? How can you combine and focus unique talents and value for maximum impact

Balancing effort and impact

Finding the right balance between your efforts and the results you achieve is essential to your success and satisfaction as an entrepreneur. Many entrepreneurs work extremely hard, but don't always see the desired results. And mostly it's because they don't spend time and energy on those things that produce the most impact and the best return. 

A powerful tool for understanding this is the Impact/Effort Matrix. This matrix helps you prioritize your activities based on two crucial factors: the amount of effort required and the potential impact it can have.

In the upper right quadrant, you'll find high-impact, low-effort activities - these are your "quick wins. Think about optimizing your most visited Web pages or upgrading existing customers to a premium service. These activities deserve your top priority.

In the upper left quadrant you will find products and/or projects with high impact, but also high effort. These can be transformative initiatives, such as launching a new offering or entering a new market. These projects require careful strategic planning and execution, but can be the growth accelerators for your business.

On the bottom right, you'll find low impact, low effort tasks. Think about updating your social media profiles or reorganizing your processes. These tasks are useful as "fillers" between more important activities, but be disciplined in the time you spend on them.

Finally, in the lower left quadrant, are activities with low impact but high effort. These are often the biggest time wasters, such as perfecting unimportant details or manually performing tasks that can be automated. It is crucial to critically evaluate these activities and eliminate or delegate them whenever possible. 

By regularly placing your activities in this matrix, you get a clear overview of where your time and energy are going. This allows you to make conscious choices and focus on what really matters.

The power of focus: from versatility to focused value

As an experienced leader and established entrepreneur, you have a wide range of interests and skills. This is a tremendous strength, but is often also a pitfall when it comes to focus and effectiveness in your life and business.

The power of focus is not in limiting your talents, but in strategically using all your qualities and value. Start by identifying your core value - what is the common thread in everything you do? This is often not one specific skill, but a unique combination of your talents, qualities, values and interests (passion) that sets you apart in the marketplace.

Next, it is important to translate these core values into a clear and incomparable value proposition. How do you use your unique combination of skills to solve specific problems for your clients? What is the one thing you can do knee-deep and with your energy the only thing in your way and impact? Formulate this in a powerful sentence that immediately makes clear who you are, what your added value is and what the result is for your top clients.

With this foundation, you can structure your offerings into a "value ladder. Start with free content to increase your visibility and demonstrate your expertise. Think blogs, podcasts or webinars. Build this into low-threshold products for initial conversion, such as workshops or mini-courses. Then you can offer premium services for in-depth and long-term collaboration, and eventually a VIP offer for your most valuable customers.

By structuring your offerings in this way, you not only create different price points, but also a clear growth path for your customers. This helps you maintain focus while still leveraging your versatility.

From value to profit

A profitable and future-proof business, but one with a business model and structure that suits you and your life. A crucial choice that many do not consider or minimally consider. After all, how do you envision your future? How do you live, what kind of business do you want to run? Do you want to establish a lifestyle business or a performance business?

Briefly:

• Lifestyle business: you are a solopreneur and are supported by a shell of freelancers
• Performance business: you are the leader of a company with at least 30-40 male/female employees, including management team etc.

From both you can build a profitable and forward-looking business. The position, skills and associated responsibilities do differ. 

Do you run a lifestyle or performance business?

Profitable product strategy

Start by making a list of all your current and potential products/services. Then place these in the Impact/Effort Matrix.

Analyze your results and determine which activities fall into the "High Impact, Low Effort" quadrant. These deserve your immediate attention. Which time-consuming tasks yield little benefit? Consider eliminating or delegating these.

Then create a 90-day plan in which you focus on up to three high-impact initiatives. By focusing your energy on a limited number of priorities, you increase the likelihood of significant progress. This is the reason why I divide my annual plan into quarterly plans and so I set and can adjust my strategic goals and actions each quarter. And for this I use the Framework: MORE - BETTER - NEW, which I often write about.

What works well and I am going to do more, what could be better and I am going to adjust and what am I going to add new value? And the Impact/Effort Matrix helps with that to then keep the focus on my long-term vision and the right action at the right time (read return on my effort versus impact).

Remember to evaluate and adjust regularly. You are growing and developing, and so is your business. The market as well as the needs of your customers are constantly changing, and your strategy must move with it. Schedule weekly/monthly/quarterly reviews to assess your progress and adjust your course as needed.

What is the one action you will take this week to increase your impact? 

 One Life. Lead it. Live it.

Have a great week,

Gerdi

P.S. Want more in-depth insights into implementing these strategies? Then consider attending my free master class "From Idea to Impact". In it I show you the strategic steps on how to maximize your potential, value and all your ideas towards impact and strategically (re)structuring your business for sustainable success. You can sign up directly here.

Whenever you are ready:

✅ Ready to do things differently? Start to Lead your Life and Business including Leaders of the Future Community

✅ Want more time and freedom for yourself and grow your business?  Scale to Unlimited Freedom

✅ Working together on the new future and focusing on healthy living, leadership and entrepreneurship? Life, Leadership & Legacy including The high-value Health & Business Leadership Club

✅ A 4-week Sprint collaboration for your specific strategic issue: Whether it's your LinkedIn Sprint, Strategic Positioning Sprint or Growth Sprint.... Your strategic issue developed into a clear plan with the right actions to achieve your 2025 result. 

Because you want to get more out of life AND Continue to grow profitably personally, professionally and financially

PS2. Future-proof growth in impact, profit and freedom, but not sure what to focus on next?

Do the Free Growth Scan that pinpoints exactly what stage your business is in, and where the growth potential lies for you personally, business-wise and financially. Answer the questions and immediately receive a personalized action plan to make your business Future-Fit, and grow to a new level of impact, profit and freedom.

Developed based on 20+ years of experience in international companies and as a strategic business partner of dozens of entrepreneurs.

Living life as a healthy leader of a healthy future-proof business and financially sound future.

Invest in yourself, invest in your business and invest in your future

Achieve greater returns and grow profitably on a personal, business and financial level

Book tips:

Books that have helped me:

Strategy

John Lewis Gaddis - On strategic thinking
Patrick-Bet David & Greg Dinkin - Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy
Alex Hormozi – $100M Leads
Alex Hormozi – $100M Offers

Leadership & Entrepreneurship

The Diary of a CEO - Steven Bartlett
Tribes - Seth Godin
Principles - Ray Dalio
The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
Leaders Eat Last - Simon Sinek
Leading From The Emerging Future - C Otto Scharmer
Transformational Presence - Alan Seale
The Big Leap - Gay Hendricks

PS. I have a whole book list. If you are interested and would like to receive my favorite books list? Send me a message and I'll send you my favorites list. 

Divide = multiply.