On a cold Saturday morning in December, the owner of a family masonry company clears the kitchen table. He sets out three index cards and a pen. At the top of the first card he writes Start. On the second, Stop. On the third, Keep.

He is not writing a wish list. He is writing the decisions his marketing and operations will follow when the thaw comes and the phones get loud again. The cards have to fit on a dashboard. They have to make sense to his sister, who runs the office. And they have to survive the first week in March when a chimney job runs long and nobody wants to open a spreadsheet.

This is an illustrative scene. The masonry company in this post is an invented example business, not a client story, and nothing here describes a real result. But the exercise is one WeKinnect uses often in strategy work: Start, Stop, Keep. Done carefully, it turns a noisy year into a short plan. Done carelessly, it becomes three vague slogans nobody can run.

Meet the company (an invented example)

Our example is a family masonry and hardscape company run by Dominic and his sister Irene. They rebuild steps, repair retaining walls, tuckpoint brick, and take on the occasional fireplace surround. Winter is for indoor estimates, shop maintenance, and planning. Spring through fall is for the work.

Looking back on the year, Dominic can fill a page without trying:

1. They said yes too often. A long drive for a small job ate a whole Friday in May.
2. Their best work was hard to find online. People still found them by referral, which is good, and by outdated photos, which is not.
3. They posted when they remembered. Then went silent for a month.
4. They never wrote down what “enough work” meant. So every inquiry felt urgent.

A strategy session exists to force choices like these into the open. The package that follows is the plan those choices become. This post is about the Start / Stop / Keep list itself: how to write one for 2027 that a crew can follow.

Why three lists beat one long plan

Long plans feel responsible. They also get ignored. Three short lists do a different job.

Start is the work you will add because this year showed a gap.

Stop is the work you will drop because it cost more than it returned.

Keep is the work that already earns its place and should not be abandoned when things get busy.

Together they create desire in the useful sense: relief from scattered activity. Dominic already has tactics. What he lacks is a sequence he can defend to Irene, to a part-time estimator, and to himself on a tired Thursday.

Trust converts when the list produces decisions, not décor. A finished Start / Stop / Keep list should leave behind a priority, a capacity limit, a channel choice, and a measure. It should also say what the company will not do.

Goals that are specific enough to run

There’s a long research line on why vague goals fail. In 2002, Edwin Locke and Gary Latham summarized thirty-five years of goal-setting research in American Psychologist. Across that body of work, specific, challenging goals tended to produce better performance than vague “do your best” goals, when people accepted the goal, could measure progress, and had the ability to perform.

That’s a summary of organizational and laboratory research, not a study of masonry marketing, and it doesn’t predict a revenue number for Dominic’s company. It does support a practical rule for his cards: if a line couldn’t be checked in June, it doesn’t belong on the list.

Weak line: “Get more visible.”

Stronger line: “Publish one project photo per week from April through October, with the town name in the caption.”

Weak line: “Stop wasting time.”

Stronger line: “Stop taking brick-repair jobs more than forty-five minutes from the shop unless the crew is already in that area.”

Weak line: “Keep doing what works.”

Stronger line: “Keep asking every finished client for permission to photograph the work before we leave the site.”

How to fill the Stop card first

Most people want to start with Start. That is usually a mistake. Addition feels like progress. Subtraction is where capacity comes from.

Dominic’s Stop card might include:

• Stop saying yes to every distant small job. Set a drive-time limit and write it down.
• Stop posting only when the mood strikes. Silence is also a choice, and last August showed what it costs.
• Stop using photos from three years ago as if they were current. Old work is fine when labeled. Misleading is not.
• Stop promising estimate times the office can’t keep. If Irene needs three days, the website and the voicemail should say three days.

Notice that none of these require a new tool. They require a decision and a sentence someone else can repeat.

For a masonry company, Stop can also include safety-related habits in public communication. Dust from cutting brick and stone is not a marketing theme, but it is an operations reality. OSHA’s pages on crystalline silica in construction exist because silica exposure is a serious workplace hazard. Dominic’s public content should never invent safety claims, and his Stop list can include “stop posting cutting photos without the dust controls we actually use.” That is brand consistency, not a certification. It tells customers and crew the same story.

How to fill the Keep card with honesty

Keep is harder than it looks. People use it to protect favorites. The better use is to protect what already works when stress arrives.

Dominic’s Keep card might include:

• Keep the referral thank-you. A handwritten note after a referred job.
• Keep the same primary service area language on the website, listings, and estimate emails.
• Keep photographing finished work the same day , with permission.
• Keep Irene’s estimate window as the public promise, even when Dominic wants to sound faster.

If a Keep item has no owner, it will be the first thing abandoned in April. Write the owner’s name beside it.

How to fill the Start card without flooding the year

Start should close gaps the year revealed, not invent a new personality for the company.

Dominic’s Start card might include:

• Start a simple project page for each major job type (steps, retaining walls, tuckpointing), with current photos and the towns they serve.
• Start a monthly review of inquiries by source: referral, search, repeat client, other.
• Start turning down work outside the drive-time limit with a short, polite script Irene can use.
• Start one community habit that fits the trade, such as a yearly note to the volunteer fire department they already support, without turning it into a campaign.

Each Start line needs three add-ons before it is finished:

1. Owner. Who makes sure it happens?
2. First date. When does it begin?
3. Measure. How will we know it is working by June?

If those three blanks can’t be filled, the line goes back to the draft pile.

Write the list so someone else can run it

A strategy session fails when the only person who understands the plan is the person who talked the most. Dominic’s finished cards should pass a simple test: Irene can run next week from them without calling him.

That means:

• Short lines. One decision per line.
• Plain words. No slogans.
• Capacity limits written as numbers or boundaries. Miles, days, posts per week.
• What we will not do. Written on the Stop card, not implied.

The marketing package that follows a session can then attach channels and materials to those decisions. The list comes first. The tactics follow. If the tactics arrive first, the list becomes decoration.

A ninety-minute kitchen-table method

Dominic and Irene do not need a retreat. They need a morning.

Minutes 0–15. Each person writes alone. Three starts, three stops, three keeps. No discussion yet.

Minutes 15–35. Compare Stop cards first. Keep anything both wrote. Argue kindly about the rest. Aim for three to five stops total.

Minutes 35–55. Compare Keep cards. If an item has no owner or no proof it worked, it does not stay.

Minutes 55–75. Compare Start cards. Every start must close a gap the Stop and Keep conversation made visible. Cap the list. More than five starts is usually a second year in disguise.

Minutes 75–90. Add owners, first dates, and measures. Photograph the cards. Put the June review on the calendar with a real day and time.

This is an illustrative method, not a promised session format, length, or price. Real WeKinnect sessions are scoped to the client. The point of showing a method is to show the decisions the list must force.

Common failures

Starts that are really wishes. “Become the go-to masonry company” is a wish. “Publish weekly project photos in our service towns” is a start.

Stops nobody will enforce. If Irene will still book the distant small job when Dominic is on site, the stop is fiction. Write the script and the boundary together.

Keeps that protect ego. Keeping a channel because you like it, despite a year of silence from it, is not strategy.

No measure. If you cannot tell in June whether a line worked, you wrote a mood, not a plan.

Guarantees dressed up as goals. Do not write outcomes you cannot control, such as a ranking, a review score, or a revenue promise. Write the work you will do and the signal you will watch.

A contrast: a volunteer-run repair café

The same three cards work for a mission organization, with different relationships on the table. Picture an invented volunteer-run repair café that meets one Saturday a month so neighbors can bring lamps, chairs, and small appliances to fix instead of throw away.

Its Start / Stop / Keep list has to serve volunteers, visitors, and the church basement that hosts them.

Stop might include taking in repairs the volunteers cannot safely do, or posting event notices so late that nobody can plan to come.

Keep might include the thank-you to volunteers at the end of each Saturday, and the rule that visitors leave with their item or with an honest explanation.

Start might include a simple skills sign-up so a sewing volunteer and an electronics volunteer are not both out in the same month, and a one-page guide for new hosts.

Donors, if the café has any, need a different story than visitors. Volunteers need schedules more than slogans. The people served need dignity, not before-and-after content they did not approve.

A repair café also has to stop confusing activity with mission. A Start that adds a second Saturday may look like growth and still burn out the three people who unlock the basement. A Stop that declines certain repairs protects visitors and volunteers alike. A Keep that preserves the thank-you circle at the end of the day protects the culture that makes people return.

The three cards still help, because they force the café to choose what it will not try to be. Mission-aligned planning is not softer than trade planning. It is stricter about who the work is for.

What to bring into a strategy conversation

If Dominic sits down with WeKinnect, or runs the exercise on his own, the useful inputs are ordinary:

• Last year’s busiest weeks and the jobs that made them busy
• The inquiries they wish they had declined
• The work they are proudest of, with permission to show it
• The service area they can actually cover well
• Who will own each line on the cards

What he does not need is a stack of competitor screenshots or a promise dressed as a plan.

Match the list to the season

A masonry company does not have the same year a gift shop has. Dominic’s cards should respect that.

Winter lines can include estimate-language cleanup, photo archives, and the June review date.

Spring lines should assume limited office time. If a Start requires Irene to spend an hour a day on social posts in April, it will fail.

Summer lines should protect crew capacity. Marketing that creates the wrong jobs is worse than silence.

Fall lines can prepare the quiet-season content while the work is still photogenic.

Seasonality is not an excuse to avoid planning. It is the reason the plan has to be light enough to carry.

Turn each card into language people hear

A list that only lives on the kitchen table helps Dominic. A list that changes the words customers hear helps the company.

Examples of translating a line into public language:

• Stop card: drive-time limit → website services page and estimate emails state the towns served.
• Keep card: estimate window → voicemail and Google Business Profile show the same timing.
• Start card: weekly project photo → caption template Irene can fill in under ten minutes.

When the public language and the internal list disagree, customers learn to trust neither. Strategy work includes that alignment. It is not separate from “the branding.” For a trades company, the brand is often the promise you keep on the phone.

What a finished package can hold

After the cards are done, a marketing package can attach tools to the decisions without inventing new ones. Depending on what WeKinnect and the client choose, that package might include listing cleanup in the service towns, a simple project-page structure, a monthly review rhythm on the marketing platform, or promotional thank-yous for a short referral list. Those are examples of support, not a menu promised in this post.

The order still matters:

1. Decisions on the cards
2. Boundaries written so Irene can enforce them
3. Channels and materials that serve those decisions
4. A review date that is real

If someone arrives with a channel idea first, Dominic should ask which card it serves. If it serves none, it waits.

How to review the list in June without starting over

A June review is not a new strategy session. It is a checkup.

Dominic and Irene bring the photographed cards and ask only:

• Which Starts happened?
• Which Stops were broken, and why?
• Which Keeps still deserve the name?
• What one line changes for the second half of the year?

They do not add five new Starts because a competitor posted a reel. They do not throw out a Keep because they are tired of it. They adjust the list the way they adjust a job when the footing is different than expected: carefully, with the original plan still in view.

Language to avoid on the cards

Because these cards become the year’s spine, the language has to stay clean.

• No rankings or “number one” claims.
• No invented statistics.
• No guarantees of leads, revenue, or review scores.
• No session length, price, or package promise written as if it were a goal.
• No empty intensifiers. If a line needs an empty intensifier to work, rewrite the line.

The Monday guide asks for planning, capacity, season, scope, measure, and what we will not do. Dominic’s cards should sound like that room: calm, specific, and usable under pressure.

A sample set of cards (illustrative)

After an hour at the table, Dominic and Irene’s cards might look like this. These lines are invented examples, not a template every mason should copy.

Stop

1. Jobs more than forty-five minutes away unless the crew is already nearby. Owner: Irene. Script taped by the phone.
2. Using project photos older than two seasons without labeling them as archival. Owner: Dominic.
3. Promising same-week estimates. Public promise is three business days. Owner: Irene.

Keep

1. Handwritten thank-you for referral jobs within a week. Owner: Irene.
2. Same service-area towns on the website, listings, and estimate emails. Owner: Irene.
3. Photo permission asked before leaving the site. Owner: Dominic.

Start

1. One current project photo posted each week, April through October, with town name. Owner: Irene. First date: first Friday in April. Measure: posts actually published.
2. Monthly inquiry log by source. Owner: Irene. First date: first Monday in January. Measure: log completed before the June review.
3. Three project pages (steps, walls, tuckpointing) with current photos. Owner: Dominic drafts, Irene publishes. First date: pages live by March 1. Measure: pages live, linked from the home page.

The sample is short on purpose. A longer list would feel more complete and fail sooner.

What WeKinnect is for in this process

WeKinnect’s strategy work is there to force the choices and to turn them into a package a team can follow. It is not there to replace Dominic’s judgment about which walls are safe to rebuild, or Irene’s judgment about which callers are ready to book.

A useful session ends with more clarity than it started with: who the work is for, what the next season must produce, and what will not be done. The cards are one way to hold that clarity in language a kitchen table can finish.

If the cards are honest, the rest of the year’s marketing has a spine. If they are vague, no amount of design will save them.

Why this builds trust

A Start / Stop / Keep list builds trust when it survives contact with a real week. The desire it creates is relief: fewer scattered yeses, a clearer boundary, and a short set of habits that still make sense when the mortarboard is full.

If you’d like help writing a Start / Stop / Keep list for 2027 and turning it into a plan your team can run, start a conversation with WeKinnect.

Photo by Gowtham AGM on Unsplash