4 Strategic factors to Grow Your Business Like Lady Gaga

You may have an opinion about Lady Gaga, yet, she remains a powerful icon in her business and career. There is no doubt, Lady Gaga understands her art. First of all, she anticipates her target market’s need with precision and delivers them with passion and creativity. What lessons can you learn from Lady Gaga in order to grow your business?

But one thing stands out; Gaga is not building her business on luck. Like many successful entrepreneurs, Lady Gaga experiences disappointment, setback, and discouragement almost on daily basis. The cancellation of her first record agreement by Def Jam Records could have ended her dreams; yet, she persisted. Rather than give up, her amazing positive response to situations and intense determination and flexibility are central to her success. Certainly, Lady Gaga’s business growth reinforces a fundamental viewpoint that success in life requires well-formulated strategies executed with discipline.

Everything Lady Gaga represents on stage demonstrates a deliberate combination of strategies aimed at creating and sustaining the “Lady Gaga” brand. They also add incredible values to the Gaga market niche. Each strategy, including the unique differentiated images, fashion leadership, shock value, and media presence she exhibits is not exclusive to the Gaga’s business. Any business in any industry can refine and deliver them even better.

Building your brand to grow your business

It is common sense to argue that Lady Gaga builds her career on the premise of music alone. What is not totally true, perhaps, is thinking that singing or dancing is everything that brought Lady Gaga to fame.

The Lady Gaga brand came about as a result of careful diversification of skills, capabilities, and innovation. Consequently, the “Lady Gaga” persona appeals to a wide range of audience, whose satisfaction is constantly met.  In building such a brand, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (real names) leverages a variety of strategic components. First of all, Gaga offers music on a unique set of dressing that captures strong visual appearances. She holds celebrity newsworthy events, and demonstrate unique values that her audience accepts. No doubt, Lady Gaga is the successful CEO of her career!

Knowing what you want, and having a clear understanding of the operating environment is the first step to grow your business. Like Lady Gaga, successful entrepreneurs are obsessed with the vision to change the world. They identify key strategies they would execute and focus on them to deliver greater results. 

Finding the strategy to grow your business

To grow your business successfully, your strategies must consist of four foundational growth characteristics as follows: envisioned future, a profound knowledge of your competitive environment, an honest appraisal of your available resources, and disciplined execution. Let me explain.

Create an envisioned future

An envisioned future consists of two components; long-term audacious goals of say 10 to 30 years, and a vivid description of how to accomplish the goals. Long-term goals are important because they compel entrepreneurs to think beyond the present, and plan for the future.

Consider the vision to “Put a man in the moon (NASA, 1960),” “Democratize the automobile (Ford Motors, 1900),” or to “Become the dominant player in commercial aircraft, (Boeing, 1950). In contrast to some of the popular goals or vision statements that seek to “increase revenue by 30 percent…” an envisioned future is daunting and compelling. As a result, its accomplishment brings about a transformation in the marketplace.

A long-term goal is necessary to grow your business to the next level. First of all, it helps to figure out the activities on which companies commit their resources. As a result, it seeks to stimulate progress by constantly driving the strategy execution towards the goal. Winning Grammy awards and topping the world music charts by Lady Gaga are some of the results of an intense focus and commitment. Most noteworthy are countless tour rehearsals, television shows, and radio appearances to which Lady Gaga commits her time and resources regularly.

To grow your business like Gaga, envision the future you want to become. Furthermore, dare to figure out the key resources and capabilities on which to exploit your strategies. Scroll down for further insights on key resources and capabilities.

Understand your Competitive environment

Every business thrives on the basis of competition. Similarly, competition determines the profitability and growth of a business. To compete effectively and grow your business to the next level, therefore, requires a profound awareness of the industry you operate in.

A competitive environment consists of external factors that contend for products and services in the market. Such forces range from the number of customers, suppliers, potential new businesses, and substitute products and services operating within the market. It also includes the effect of government regulations, as well as changes in social and technological trends. An industry is competitive if it has many sellers offering the same or similar products or services. Smartphone auto manufacturers, and, food vendors are just a few examples.

It is important for entrepreneurs to pay attention to the dynamics of the competitive environments they operate in. Such knowledge is useful for making important decisions, as well as positioning the business for growth. The manner in which Lady Gaga approaches her business demonstrates a deep understanding of the trends in her external business environment.

Appraise your key resources

How can organizations create a competitive advantage, and multiply profitability and growth with internal resources and capabilities? Practically, a company’s internal resources and capabilities can be a source of competitive advantage, only if they are valuable to the company’s business.  Internal resources play a key role in formulating and executing strategies that improve a company’s operational efficiency and effectiveness.

Resources are the productive assets that companies own and they consist of such tangibles as cash and plant, intangibles including trademark, brands, and culture, as well as human. On the other hand, capabilities cover a wide range of processes through which companies create results. The effectiveness of any capability hinges on the ability of the company to put resources into proper use to create results. A company’s capabilities, therefore, consist of such areas as operations, marketing, or customer service.

Resources and capabilities play important roles in creating outstanding performances for organizations. First of all, successful entrepreneurs coordinate resources to create organizational capabilities. They, in turn, create and implement strategies that exploit the business capabilities. The entire process provides the basis for a competitive advantage.

Similarly, you can grow your business like Lady Gaga by developing a thorough understanding of your key resources. Thereafter, apply your core capabilities on the important strategies to create a sustainable growth.

Develop disciplined execution

The best business strategies will fail until the company executes such strategies with discipline. Critical to Lady Gaga’s success is an effective leadership, coupled with robust support structures that facilitate decision and operational performance.

Many entrepreneurs fail at execution. Even though they have good intentions for growth, they fail at demonstrating the will to execute key business actions. Since creating different results require doing things differently, developing a new set of behaviour, and focusing on the bigger picture are critical.