Over the course of this series we’ve talked about a number of activities and actions you can take to grow your business. The fourth and final side of the quad framework is really to stop and pause and reflect. The goal here is to think about what’s worked and what’s not and to consolidate and integrate your learnings to help improve.

Let me highlight a few questions that I like to ask when I’m working with a startup as it relates to every aspect of the quad framework. First we talked a lot about strategy. I think after you’ve done a few iterations in marketing it’s fair to ask yourself do you have the right product, is it relevant to the right target, do you have the right customer. You might find certain segments that you may not have looked at initially but are more profitable and have a higher interest in your product or service.

And as you think about strategy, we talked a lot about setting your foundation for execution. The questions I would ask, do you have a really well‑documented content marketing plan, is it actually working, and are your objectives clear. After you’ve worked objectives and content we talked a lot about marketing channels and what channels to chose. Do you have the right tactics? Do you have the right people doing the work for you? As you move from execution to optimization we talked a lot about growth hacking. Are you testing? Are you learning? Are you implementing those results? And are you really getting clear on what are those key aha moments to help codify those learnings and figure out what are those levers for success?

And as you go through this process you will hit that upper left corner which is to really make three decisions. One is to pause and think about do you need to make changes to your business, your product and your marketing tactic? Or potentially you pivot. Are there things that you learn that lead you to believe that you may want to pursue a different business or maybe a different segment? Are you going to aggressively pursue the business moving forward and continue along on that marketing mojo that you’ve already put in place? All you need is a little ingenuity, some hustle, curiosity and hard work. And those are the things that make you great as an entrepreneur. There’s never been a better time to create a startup. Go out there and market your product.