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Strategic Piece Plans for 2022

by Matt, on 20 Jan 2022

It has been an amazing two years for Strategic Piece!

Nevertheless, we continue learning, evolving our thinking, and adapting our business model. Today, we’re announcing some exciting new developments coming in 2022.

First, a quick look-back on our journey to this point…

WHERE WE’VE BEEN

Although the COVID pandemic caused us to work differently from what we had anticipated, it didn’t slow us down. Strategic Piece has won and delivered projects entirely over Zoom, without meeting our clients in person – something we would have labeled unlikely, if not impossible, when we began our journey.

During 2021, we refined our project acceptance criteria to ensure our time is spent with businesses most able to benefit from what we do best and where we can have the greatest impact. This has meant fewer but larger projects for companies with established product-market fit and sufficient funds to invest in sustained, consistent marketing.

From a market focus point of view, our portfolio has diversified beyond energy and industrials, with fintech and SaaS making up a significant slice of our project pie.

As a HubSpot partner, we reached platinum status and delivered our first enterprise tier implementations and web/CMS projects. The HubSpot platform remains our CRM solution of choice, both in-house and for our clients.

We operated at capacity throughout the second half of 2021, all the while wrestling with the nice-to-have challenge of how to scale the business further.

As we went through our year-end review and 2022 planning process, we examined different pathways to growth. In the end, we decided to leave Strategic Piece running much the same as before but to take on fewer new clients. This will give us bandwidth to pursue two new initiatives, each with the potential to be monetized and scaled in ways our existing business model cannot.

WHERE WE’RE GOING

We’re excited to launch two new concepts, Leaders Who Fiction, led by Melanie, and MessageUp, led by Matt.

These represent distillations of ideas about which we’re each passionate and that we’re excited to test, develop, and hopefully commercialize.

Leaders Who Fiction

LWF is a virtual book club, predicated on the growing recognition that reading fiction helps improve our leadership skills – things like EQ, communication, creativity, and problem-solving capabilities.

The first monthly meeting, which will discuss The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (Bookshop.org | Amazon), will be held on Wednesday, January 26th, from 12 - 1pm US central time. You can register for free here.

Melanie’s initial goal is to build a community of like-minded people who recognize the beneficial impact reading and thinking about fiction books can have on their lives and work. There are several potential commercial pathways this business could take if and when that community reaches a critical size.

Leaders Who Fiction (1)MessageUp

Reflecting on the most successful and satisfying projects he has completed under the Strategic Piece banner, Matt identified a common thread in messaging and communication.

MessageUp brings together his ideas and extensive research into a suite of products that will eventually include consulting, in-person training, online training, and a book.

The core framework covers six important elements that contribute to effective B2B messaging: authenticity and anchoring, branding, customer-focused content, development and delivery, evaluation, and follow through.

The beta website is live, with links to sign-up for consulting services (available now) and to be notified when learning events, online training, and the book are launched – all hopefully by mid-2022. Any feedback you may have on the website and overall concept will be most welcome!

MessageUp will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Strategic Piece for the foreseeable future.

messageup logo

Strategic Piece

As mentioned, we will continue supporting a core group of Strategic Piece clients, some of whom have been working with us for more than two years.

We will review inbound leads and referrals (which we greatly appreciate!) on a case-by-case basis, adding new projects when our reduced bandwidth permits and referring projects we can’t handle to other consultancies and agencies where we see a good fit.

Since we plan to devote as much time as possible to launching our new concepts, we will be suspending the Strategic Piece Talks blog for now. Hopefully it has provided useful insights and it will remain accessible as a searchable reference.

Please follow us on LinkedIn (Melanie, Matt, MessageUp) and Instagram to see our latest posts and articles.

 

We hope 2022 brings as much success and excitement to your business as we are anticipating it will bring to us!

If you’d like to learn more about either of our new concepts or have suggestions for how we can make them even better, we’d love to hear from you.

Topics:Strategic Piece

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