This Strategy Built a $300 Million Business (Here’s the Template)
September 30, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readAt Ramsey Solutions, a $300 million business, the strategic planning process starts not with spreadsheets or financial projections but with a blank page and a simple question: what do you really want for your business in the next 12 months? Senior director of strategic planning Mark Lubers walks through the six-step template the company uses, and his first instruction is to resist the urge to jump straight into tactics. The goal is to slow down on the front end so you can move faster later.
Start with dreaming, not analyzing
The first step is deliberately unstructured. Lubers says leaders should sit down with a notepad or whiteboard and just brainstorm. What do you want your business to look and feel like a year from now? What kind of customers do you want to serve? What would success feel like for you personally? In a role-play example, the host imagines owning a construction company and says he wants to double revenue. Lubers pushes deeper: why do you want that? Because it would mean more stability, less worry, and a six-month pipeline of work waiting in front of the company. That emotional connection matters. "We tend to think about strategy as so much just an analytical approach," Lubers says, "but in reality, there's a hugely emotional component to this."
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:05) **Why a Written Strategic Plan is Non-Negotiable** - Without a written strategic plan, a business will hit a ceiling and get stuck; Ramsey Solutions used this method to grow to $300 million.
- 2 (01:31) **Step 1: Dreaming About the Desired Future** - The process starts by zooming out and defining what you really want your business to look and feel like in the next 12 months.
- 3 (04:56) **The Emotional Component of Strategy** - Leaders must connect to the emotional “why” behind their goals to effectively vision-cast and galvanize the team.
- 4 (07:59) **Step 2: Narrowing Down and Identifying the Key Problem** - From the big list of dreams, choose one priority and then identify the specific barrier preventing you from having it today.
- 5 (09:53) **Step 3: Creating the Desired Future Statement** - This is a specific, date-bound commitment to an action that will remove the barrier and lead to a clear outcome.
- 6 (13:17) **The Importance of Slow, Deep Thinking and Team Involvement** - Strategic planning is not a quick checklist; it requires wrestling with options, praying about them, and involving your team.
- 7 (16:14) **Defining the Outcome (Finish Line)** - The outcome must be a clear, measurable finish line that is closely tied to the action, not just an activity.
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Show Notes
A business without a clear plan will eventually get stuck.
In this episode, head coach John Felkins sits down with Ramsey’s senior director of strategic planning, Mark Lubbers, to walk you through six steps for building a strategic plan that moves your business forward.
Next Steps:
· 🚀 Get the proven road map to scale your business.
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· 📧 Get EntreLeadership’s free weekly newsletter: expert advice and practical tips from the same playbook we used to build Ramsey Solutions into a $300 million company.
· 🌎 Attend our world-class leadership conference, EntreLeadership Summit.
· 📝 Stop guessing. Get a plan built for your business and someone who holds you to it. Find out which coaching option is right for you.
· 📈 Bad hires. Strategies that never get off the ground. 60-hour workweeks. Sleepless nights. EntreLeadership Master Series is where you trade all that for the exact systems our Executive Team used to scale Ramsey Solutions to $300 million. Don’t wait until seats are sold out.
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