Don't start with the revenue target. Start with the business you want to build.

Revenue targets are useful. I've set plenty of them: £1m, £5m, £10m, double in three years, grow 20% this year. They give people something tangible to aim at.

But I've increasingly come to believe that revenue is a poor place to start a strategy conversation.

Two businesses with exactly the same turnover can be completely different businesses. One might be profitable, enjoyable and resilient. The other might be exhausting its people, dependent on a handful of customers and barely making any money.

So when I'm working with founders and leadership teams, I prefer to start somewhere else.

What are you actually trying to build?

Define success before chasing growth.

It's an obvious question, but surprisingly few leadership teams spend enough time on it.
What would a genuinely successful business look like in three or five years?

• How big do you want it to be, and how much profit should it generate?
• What kind of clients do you want and what work do you want to be known for?
• Where do you want to operate?
• How dependent should the business be on its founders?
• What kind of team and culture do you want to create?

And perhaps most importantly: What do you want it to feel like to work there?

That final question matters. I've seen businesses achieve impressive financial growth while becoming places the founders no longer particularly enjoy running. That's not my definition of success.

Vision creates the destination.

This is where a meaningful vision helps. A vision shouldn't simply be a grand statement. It should describe a future people can understand and make decisions against.

If the ambition is clear, you can begin working backwards:

• Which markets and customers matter?
• What capabilities and reputation will we need?
• What kind of people need to join us?
• Where will the revenue come from?
• What will we need to stop doing?

Strategy is essentially the set of choices that connects where you are today with where you want to be tomorrow.

Mission creates focus.

The mission brings the vision closer to the present. What do we actually do? Who do we do it for? And what value are we trying to create?

This is where many growing businesses become unnecessarily complicated. They add services, sectors, products and propositions. Over time, even the team can struggle to explain what the company really does.

A good mission forces clarity, and clarity helps commercialisation. If everyone in the organisation understands who you're trying to help and the problem you're trying to solve, sales, marketing, investment, recruitment and prioritisation all become clearer.

Values create the boundaries.

Then there are values. I think businesses sometimes make these far more complicated than necessary.

Values are simply the behaviours and principles you are unwilling to compromise as you pursue the vision. They're most valuable when there's a difficult decision.

Do we take this customer? Do we hire this person? Do we enter this partnership? Do we sacrifice margin to solve a problem for a client? Do we pursue growth that might damage the culture?

That's when you discover whether the values actually mean anything.

For me personally, fairness, vitality, prudence, leadership and fun are important lenses through which I think about decisions. Not because every decision is easy. Quite the opposite. They help when the decision is hard.

The same should be true inside a business.

Then build the commercial engine.

Only once those foundations are clear would I move into the commercial model. Where will growth come from? There are usually fewer answers than people imagine:

• More customers or higher spend from existing customers.
• Higher prices, improved retention or greater purchasing frequency.
• New products, services or markets.
• Partnerships, channels or acquisition.

Most commercial strategies are some combination of these. The important part is choosing.

If you need £2m of additional revenue over the next three years, where specifically is it going to come from? How much from existing customers? How much from new customers? Which proposition? Which market? At what margin? Owned by whom? By when?

Now the strategy is becoming executable.

Work backwards.

I like working backwards from the outcome. Say the business needs 20 new customers. How many qualified opportunities does that require? How many conversations? How many leads? Where will those leads originate? What proposition will attract them? What proof will make them trust you? What needs to happen operationally if you win them?

Suddenly a large strategic ambition becomes a series of manageable commercial assumptions. And assumptions can be tested.

That's important because strategy shouldn't be treated as certainty. You make your best judgement, execute, learn and adapt.

Sustainable growth is the goal.

This is also why I don't think the objective should simply be growth at any cost. I've spent enough time around growing businesses to know that more revenue does not automatically mean a better company.

The growth needs to be sustainable - commercially, operationally and culturally.

That's why I keep coming back to the same sequence:
Vision. Mission. Values. Strategy. Commercialisation. Execution.

Each one informs the next. Revenue is the output. It shouldn't be the reason the business exists.

Build the right business first. Then build the commercial engine that allows it to grow.