How To Successfully Grow Your Business, According To An Ancient Chinese Military Strategist

Over 2,500 years ago, a Chinese military strategist named Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War. It’s one of the most influential books ever written on strategy… and it has more to say about growing your online business than most business books on the shelf today.

Here’s why.

The Pattern That Keeps Entrepreneurs Stuck

Have you ever worked all day… or even an entire week… and gotten to the end of it feeling like you barely moved the needle?

What about doing that for months? Or years?

If you’re running an online business, there’s a good chance you’ve experienced this. You’re busy. You’re doing things. But the forward progress doesn’t match the effort.

I’ve been there myself. Even after years of doing this, I’ve had stretches where I was flying by the seat of my pants… going from one idea to the next without any real throughline connecting them. From the outside, it probably looked like I was all over the place. From the inside, it felt that way too.

The missing ingredient wasn’t knowledge. It wasn’t effort. It wasn’t talent.

It was a strategic plan.

Why Mindless Forward Movement Doesn’t Work

There’s a principle that shows up across philosophy, business, and even natural law. It goes like this:

BE → DO → HAVE

If you be a certain thing, then do a certain thing… you will have a certain thing.

Most people reverse it. They think if they have a certain thing (a nice website, a big audience, a product), they’ll be able to do what they want and then be who they want to be (free, fulfilled, successful).

It doesn’t work in reverse. And trying to force it is what leads to that frustrating feeling of spinning your wheels.

Your blog is just bits and bytes on a server until it’s given direction. Your business is just a collection of tasks until it’s given meaning. The “BE” comes first… the vision, the purpose, the strategy. Everything else follows from that.

Without it, you’re a body without a soul. A soldier without a general. And you’ll lose not just the next battle, but the war.

What Sun Tzu Knew About Strategy

Sun Tzu said:

“The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.”

Nowhere in history has a war been won without strategic planning. The individual battles are played out according to the overall strategy. The soldiers on the ground do their jobs… but the direction comes from above.

In your business, you are both the general and the soldier. And if you skip the general’s job (strategic planning) and jump straight into the soldier’s job (execution), you end up busy but directionless.

This is where overwhelm comes from. This is why it feels like there’s never enough time. This is why every new blog post, product idea, or shiny tool feels equally urgent… because without a strategy, there’s no filter to tell you what actually matters.

How To Create Your Strategic Plan

You don’t need a 50-page business plan. You need clarity on four things:

1. What is the situation now? Be honest. Where does your business actually stand… not where you wish it stood?
2. What is the outcome you want? What does the business look like when it’s working the way you want? Be specific.
3. What are the main differences between now and that outcome? What would need to change to bridge that gap?
4. What are the broad plans to address those differences? Not the tactics… the strategy. The big moves.

Write this down. Actually do it. Not in your head… on paper or in a document.

A few important notes:

Your plan has to be real to you. If you’re working a full-time job and have family obligations in the evening, a strategic plan that assumes 8 hours of daily focused business time is going to fall flat. The plan needs to account for your actual reality… and still be something that excites you.

Keep it broad. You’re not mapping out every tactic and step. You’re defining direction. The specific how will evolve as you learn and as circumstances change. That’s fine… as long as the direction stays clear.

Strategy is your filter. Once you have a strategic plan, every decision gets easier. Should I start a YouTube channel? Should I build a course? Should I rewrite my homepage? The answer depends on whether it advances your strategy or not. Without that filter, everything feels like it might be important… and that’s paralyzing.

The Difference It Makes

When you have a real strategic plan… even a simple one… something shifts. You stop reacting to whatever lands in front of you and start making deliberate moves.

You stop feeling overwhelmed because you know what matters and what doesn’t. You stop getting distracted by shiny objects because you can evaluate them against your plan. And you stop feeling like you’re working hard with nothing to show for it… because every action is connected to something bigger.

Sun Tzu also said:

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

Most entrepreneurs are drowning in tactics. What they’re missing is the strategy that makes those tactics meaningful.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or like you’re spinning your wheels despite working hard… the fix probably isn’t another tactic. It’s stepping back, getting into your “temple,” and making your calculations before the next battle.

If you’d like help putting that plan together, that’s exactly the kind of thing we can work through on a Strategy Call. We’ll look at where you are, where you want to go, and map out a real plan to get there.