How a vacation transformed Jim Garland’s business

When I ask business leaders what it means to have a strategy-driven business, or what it means to be a strategic business owner, I mostly get responses that it’s nice to have a strategy, but it’s not really that important. My observation is that this is driven by their past attempts to create and implement strategies.

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Since those attempts almost always fail to make any impact on their business, they give it up as some kind of academic exercise that is irrelevant in the real world. This is a mistake, because strategy-driven businesses perform better than their peers, and a great local example of that comes from Jim Garland of Sharp Details Inc.

Garland, 43, started his business with his brother in 1991 as a simple boat cleaning business. By 1994, their services included auto detailing and aircraft cleaning. They got their big break in 1996 when they won a contract cleaning planes for the FAA. By 1999 Sharp Details was totally focused on the aviation business, Jim was the sole owner of the company, and the company broke $1 million in revenue.

For the next four years, Garland took the path of most business owners: working “in” the business and putting in huge hours. Since he was unable to take the time to bring the business to the next level, his sales stayed between $1.3 million to $1.8 million. In 2006, after reading books like The E-Myth by Michael Gerber and engaging a strategy coach, he began the process of turning Sharp Details into a strategy-driven business.

One of the first transformational steps he took...

Read the rest at the Washington Business Journal.