One of the hardest parts of planning is coming up with effective strategies and tactics. As I think about my dealings in corporate Canada versus my dealings in the local art scene I realize there’s a lot of things we don’t talk about in art. We rarely go on about strategies or tactics. We don’t use the jargon that is used by people who give out grants and sponsorships very often.
Perhaps people are worried about idea theft. The thing about a good plan, backed by a sound strategy, with focused tactical thinking, is that no one can steal that. It’s really hard to come up with something cohesive that works. While they most definitely can jack ideas, they can’t steal the strings that tie everything together.
Since 2024 is going to be a reflective year of playing catchup with life, it gives me a lot of time to make sure my shit is in order for 2025. That being said, if we want to talk about making money, let’s use money language.
Sun Tzu coined the terms strategy and tactics
The really quick version is that a strategy is what you want to do. Tactics are the things you will do to achieve whatever you want to do. In The Art of War Tzu goes on about how tactics without strategy are aimless. Strategy without tactics is time consuming nonsense.
A lot of the book is to get you thinking strategically, while leveraging tactics to your advantage. I’ll be honest I haven’t read it in years but 4 of the 6 articles I read before writing this referenced the book. One of the interesting takeaways is that tactics are a lot more visible than strategy.
Since business is a lot like war, these militaristic terms stuck. People use them when deciding what a company will work on. My old manager had a rough time instilling the difference between tactics and strategy to me. It took him years, and I was still only 80% of the way there. Bear with me if I’m wrong about any of this, the goal is to learn and share what I learn with you publicly. This is a tactic I’m using towards my goal of monetizing via edutainment.
Okay, let’s dig a little deeper into each term.
What is strategy
Strategy is your long term goal. I know a lot of you reading this will say, “make more money”. That’s not a strategy, well it’s a weak sauce one. One of Behind That Suit’s strategies is to monetize by increasing the number of paying subscribers, the amount of merchandise sold & the amount of clients who pay for creative services..
Now this strategy has more focus than just making more money. We are deciding on the main monetization channels to develop. Currently we have 1 paying subscriber. We’ve had a maximum of 6 at once. This shows me there is a lot of potential in monetizing our endeavours by convincing people to sign up somewhere like Patreon. Or they can just donate to Paypal.
I’ve sold over 1000$ of revenue’s worth of pickle merch. We also can hustle services like Chris’ lyric videos or my paid blog coverage. Since we’ve proven that these are avenues where money exists, we now have a focus.
This isn’t an exaggeration, it’s the actual focus for the year. We can measure the success of these strategies by setting clear goals. Such as:
We will hit 50 Paying Subscribers
We will sell 5000$ in merchandise
We will Sell 15000$ in creative services.
Now that we have shaped a top level, we can start to focus on the harder part. How we are actually going to achieve this goal. This is where Tactics come in.
What are tactics?
Tactics are the specific short term actions you will take to achieve your strategic goals. Tactics will often be the work, projects and visible things you do. Now you can see why it doesn’t matter so much if people steal your tactics. They can’t see your strategy or how the pieces connect.
Okay, so let’s get tactical with it. When I think about how to spend my time in a week, I need to focus on those 3 goals from the section before. To do that, I need to work on initiatives that make sense. Tactics can be thought of as the projects and initiatives you take on in real time.
Me writing this daily blog, and sharing information with you is a tactic. I want people to know I have expertise. I want people to see that if you pay me to write a blog, the turnaround time will be fast. I want people to know that before I ask for anything, I am over here giving away knowledge, and hopefully entertaining you in the process.
Another tactic we have is to show we can release a song properly. We’re going to roll out a single launch, A/B testing content on TikTok/IG and learning how to gain that reach. Once we learn how to get all this figured out, publicly doing it, we can sell you our know-how.
It honestly flips my musical goals for the year on their head. I need to create new songs, so I can test out new release strategies, so I can further come up with reasons for people to subscribe to me.
Over time I’ll gate my flushed out tactics and strategies behind the Patreon and drop some teasers in the blog like this. It’s not that defined yet. I’m learning in real time so I can focus, develop it and keep coming up with content to share with you.
This only makes sense, because it supports the strategic goals.
Strategy and tactics is the way to go
A lot of the time we get straight into the tactics. We get into the weeds and we rush to start working. The problem with that, is the work is hard but the results aren’t there. Rushing around trying to grind it all out aimlessly is not a way to win.
This is where strategy comes in. It’s the forethought and careful planning that goes into what you actually want to do. I didn’t just land on edutainment as a focus. It took years to experiment and decide this was a real direction I could take. I’ve been working on my strategic goals since 2018. Some years I’m more focused than others, but the reason I can stay consistent and “on brand” is because even when I pivot it all supports the bigger dream.
The problem with strategy is it’s really just planning. Far too often we plan so much that we forget to get any work done. This is also a bad flex. Your strategic efforts need to turn into tangible action items that drive your work forward. Then you have to go do the work. Even with this blog, I can’t write about feeling poopy that often. I want to provide real value to creative professionals who, like me, are trying to figure out how to win in this competitive world.
It’s good to write about regular shit here and there to humanize yourself. It can’t all be that. I want this blog to be a resource people can use to grow with me. It’s as much a journal as it is a way to force myself to learn the right things, or at least try to avoid self indulgence too often. I want Basics to look at the pic I share to stories and be like link me bro (I’m still waiting for him to notice me casually name dropping him. He hates it when I don’t tag him).
I digress. The point is that you need to take time to develop a strategy. Then focus on the tactics/work that will actually help you follow that strategy. This means saying no to any fun project that is out of scope at the moment. At least once a year you should revisit it and plan out the main strategy for the following year.
I know I come off stubborn to a lot of people. The thing is, I’ve already done the exercises to develop a lot of the foundational work. I’m not at a 101 intro level. I’m learning to fly without supervision at the moment.
If you want to come fly with me, we can figure that out.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
P.S. - Here are some articles I read before writing this: