Thank you to everyone who joined us for “From Stalled to Strategic: Using the PiPP Framework to Stop Marketing Procrastination.” If you couldn’t make it live, or want a refresher on everything we covered, here’s a recap of the framework, the real client stories we shared, and how you can start putting it into practice.
Why We Built PiPP
As marketers and business owners, we know there’s no shortage of advice telling you what you could be doing: a new platform, a new content format, another “must-try” tactic. But there’s only so much time, only so much budget, and only so much that will actually move your business forward.
PiPP came out of us asking ourselves how we figure out exactly what to focus on. What matters now versus what can wait? It’s become our filter, and our clients’ filter, for deciding what campaigns, initiatives, and use of time and dollars make sense right now versus what should go on the back burner.
What PiPP Actually Stands For
PiPP stands for People, Impact, Process, and Profit, but it’s not a checklist where you try to hit all four. It’s about identifying the one thing you need to protect most right now to reach your goal. We also call this your deal breaker: the thing you’re going to protect no matter what else happens, because losing it would take a self-inflicted detour away from what you’re actually trying to accomplish.
- People: your customers, employees, and relationships.
- Impact: the change you want to make in your industry, community, or the world.
- Process: making things scalable and repeatable, so you can step away and let it run.
- Profit: financial stability and getting the business (or organization) to a point of being able to sustain itself.
And to our nonprofit friends: profit still applies to you. It’s the money conversation, grants, donor diversification, budget line items, not just a for-profit concept.
The Aha Moment
Here’s the twist: most people assume they’re a “People” or “Impact” person, because they’re good people who care about their customers and their mission. But a lot of the time, that’s not actually what needs protecting right now, and figuring out the real answer is where the clarity comes from.
Even we got this wrong. When we first started on our own PiPP journey, we thought Process was our deal breaker. We kept trying to reinvent our process, thinking if we could just get it right, everything else would follow. But when we stepped back, we realized the real answer was Profit. We didn’t need another process, we needed to protect our margin. That single shift changed the questions we ask before saying yes to anything, including opportunities we love, like speaking and workshops: is this paid? Is it in front of our ideal client? Is it moving us down the line? If not, it’s a no.
Real Examples From the Field
We walked through a few real client situations to show how this plays out:
- An organization convinced Impact was their PiPP turned out to actually need People first. They had a huge database of contacts but no idea who was actually in it, no idea what those people cared about, and data scattered across multiple disconnected tools. Once they saw it clearly, they made the hire to own that role and focused their first 90 days on figuring out their audience before anything else.
- A firm focused on changing industry perception (their Impact goal) kept getting derailed by partners wanting to redo aesthetics: website redesigns, new brand colors, new video styles. None of it protected what actually mattered, and chasing it pulled focus away from the content and education work that would have moved the needle.
- An organization with a messy database, lots of people in different systems with no clear path moving someone from one system to the next, found that fixing their Process (drip campaigns, re-engagement, a real handoff between systems) had to come first. Without it, every new lead they generated was just going to fall out the bottom.
A theme across all of it: your PiPP isn’t permanent, and it shouldn’t be. One client we started working with last quarter has already shifted from People to Process as they resolved their original bottleneck, because once you fix what you were protecting, a new priority rises to the top.
Steps to Find Your Deal Breaker
- Whiteboard it. Get your key decision-makers in a room (we suggest three to five people max) and start talking through what matters in each category: People, Impact, Process, Profit.
- Determine your one big thing. What’s the goal you’re focused on this quarter? If you’re an EOS person, this is your rock.
- Name your PiPP. Of the four, which one, if you don’t protect it, means you can’t reach that big thing?
- Run your PiPP check before saying yes to anything. Ask:
- Does this move us toward our current goal?
- Does this protect our PiPP?
- What will it cost us, not just dollars, but capacity, resources, and mental energy?
- Is it right for this season?
One thing we want to be clear on: there’s no such thing as having more than one PiPP at a time. If you really sit with it, the answer rises to the top.
The Decide Once Principle
Once you’ve named your PiPP, you stop re-litigating every decision that comes across your desk. New ideas, emergencies, someone walking in with a great-but-off-strategy pitch, you run it through one filter: does this protect our PiPP and move us closer to our goal? If not, it’s not necessarily a permanent no, it might just be something to revisit at your next 90-day review.
We shared two examples of this in action:
- A client turned down a dual-purpose paid ad and sponsorship opportunity that checked a lot of boxes: local, community-based, broad reach, but wasn’t aligned with their current ICP or their 90-day sprint. It got tabled for a future quarter instead of derailing the current plan.
- A client whose PiPP was protecting People (specifically, team capacity) had to resist the pull to add five new social media channels, because adding more channels when you don’t have the capacity to run the ones you have doesn’t protect what you’ve already said matters most.
What’s Your PiPP?
By the end of the session, we asked everyone to drop their gut-feeling answer in the chat, and true to form, it was a mix of People, Impact, Process, and Profit across the room, with plenty of for-profit organizations landing on People and nonprofits landing on Process or Profit. It’s never as predictable as you’d think.
So: what’s your one thing? What do you need to protect: People, Impact, Process, or Profit, to get where you’re going?
Keep Going
This is exactly the kind of work we walk clients through in our Blueprint Session, where we dig into your vision, your goals, and your PiPP before we ever get to tactics. If you want support getting your team aligned around your deal breaker, we’re happy to set up a free consult.
And if you want more resources on PiPP as we roll them out, make sure you’re on our newsletter list.
We’d love to hear how you put PiPP into practice. Tag us or reach out and let us know what you decided, and how it turned out.