[Episode 84] Business Coach Perth FAQs | SWOT & Strategic Planning: Ask Fleur

I'm Fleur Allen, a business coach and mentor based in Perth, Western Australia. I run Ask Fleur, where I work with small business owners, BDMs and not-for-profit leaders through 1:1 coaching, group masterminds, quarterly 90-Day Planning Workshops, my Success Community membership, and the 90-Day Donor Accelerator course for fundraisers. I'm ICF accredited, CFRE certified, and a Certified Success Principles Trainer, with over a decade of hands-on fundraising and business experience behind the coaching.

Ask Fleur is my coaching and business education practice. It started out as 1:1 business coaching and fundraising consulting and has grown into a full offer: coaching, masterminds, planning workshops, an online course, and a membership community. The common thread across all of it is helping people get clear on their next 90 days and actually follow through, rather than just having another strategy sitting in a drawer.

I work as both, and I think the distinction matters. A coach helps you think through your own answers by asking the right questions.

A mentor draws on their own experience to say "here's what worked for me, here's what I'd do."

Most of my clients seek a mix of both at different points, which is why I don't box myself into one label.

In practice, that means I'll challenge your thinking in a coaching conversation, then just as happily tell you straight what I'd do in your position if that's what you find useful.

What you receive is client led.

I'm based in Perth and a lot of my client relationships start locally, through networking communities I facilitate.

But the coaching, masterminds and workshops all run online, so I work with business owners and NFP leaders right across Australia. Location isn't a barrier, if you can get on a video call during my timezone, we can work together.

A SWOT analysis is a simple framework for taking stock of your business before you plan your next move.

You look at four things:

your Strengths (what's working, what you're good at),

Weaknesses (what's holding you back or costing you),

Opportunities (what's out there that you could go after),

and Threats (what could get in the way, from competitors to market shifts to your own capacity).

Done properly it's less a box-ticking exercise and more an honest conversation with yourself about where you actually stand.

Read more here

Its job is to stop you planning in a vacuum. Most business owners jump straight to "here's what I want to achieve" without first being honest about what's actually going on inside and outside the business.

A SWOT forces that honesty first. Once you know your real strengths, gaps, openings and risks, your next-quarter goals stop being wishful thinking and start being grounded in what's true right now.

I use it as part of my 10 steps to increasing revenue for exactly this reason, you can't plan well off a picture that isn't accurate.

I treat it as the diagnostic stage, not the whole plan.

The sequence I use with clients looks like this: SWOT first, to get an honest read on the business.

Then priorities: picking the one or two things from that SWOT that will move the needle most in the next 90 days, rather than trying to fix everything at once.

Then a concrete plan with actions, owners and dates. A SWOT on its own doesn't change anything; it only earns its keep when it feeds directly into a decision about what you're going to focus on next.

No, that's part of what we do together in the session when relevant.

A lot of business owners either skip this step entirely and if they do file it away. I build it into my program itself so it's current, honest and immediately followed by action, not left sitting in a document nobody looks at again.

Read more about planning

It's one tool I use, not the whole picture. My broader focus is helping business owners and NFP leaders build a plan they'll actually execute and a support structure that keeps them accountable to it.

That shows up across everything I offer: 1:1 coaching for individual strategy and accountability, group masterminds for peer support and shared problem-solving, the quarterly 90-Day Planning Workshop for the strategic reset, the Success Community for ongoing momentum between planning sessions, and the 90-Day Donor Accelerator for fundraisers specifically wanting to grow donor income.

SWOT analysis is a step inside that system, not the whole system.

Mostly small business owners, business development managers and not-for-profit leaders across Australia.

On the small business side it's usually owners who are past the early scramble and want a proper plan and community around them rather than another course they never finish.

On the NFP side I do a lot of fundraising-specific work, I deliver fundraising courses with the Fundraising Institute of Australasia and consult directly with organisations like Co3 Contemporary Dance Company on donor communications and campaign strategy.

I don't limit myself to one industry.

The coaching I do is built around the business principles that drive revenue, and those principles hold true whether you're running a retail business, a professional services firm, or a not-for-profit.

So while a good chunk of my client base sits in small business and the NFP and fundraising space, the approach applies just as well across the board.

The easiest first step is a free call, where we talk through where your business is at and whether coaching, a workshop, or the community membership is the right fit.

Head to askfleur.com to book a time.