Every Business Needs A Wild Card Strategy
We provide businesses and non-profits with the tools and resources
to identify, prepare for, and successfully address unforeseen opportunities and threats
before they create a Future of disruption, chaos and missed opportunity.
What in the world is a ‘WILD CARD STRATEGY’
And Why Does Your Business Need One?
Wild Cards are opportunities and threats you’ve never thought of, heard of, imagined, or believed were even possible. They appear suddenly and are instantly and permanently disruptive for your business. They’re abrupt events, breakthrough technologies, instant government regulations, surprise changes in consumer thinking, or non-conventional competitors who suddenly appear.
A Wild Card Strategy prepares you to anticipate and recognize and prepare for wild card opportunities and threats. No Wild Card Strategy? You’ll miss out on opportunities to grow because you didn’t see them coming AND you’ll be vulnerable to threats that can instantly destroy your business because you didn’t see them either.
A quarter of today’s businesses will be gone in three years. A third will be gone in five years, and half will be gone in ten years. Whether the reason is bankruptcy, a merger, retirement, or a sale, there will be one underlying cause in virtually every case: inadequate preparation to confront the common enemy of all businesses . . . Uncertainty.
They lacked the strategic foresight to imagine, anticipate, and actually SEE the Wild Card opportunities and threats that await them. They lacked planned strategies to leverage their Wild Card opportunities and mitigate/eliminate their Wild Card threats. Without a Wild Card Strategy, they’ll disappear!
Every business that wants to survive and thrive in an Uncertain Future needs a Wild Card Strategy! Let us help you get there!
Meet the Future of Your Business
Hi! I’m Jim McComb, the founder and Managing Director of Wild Card Strategy.
We show businesses, non-profits, and churches in the Appalachian region how to successfully navigate their inevitably Uncertain Future. We do this by showing them how to identify the future opportunities and challenges they don’t see coming today, and how to address them now in order to ensure Certain Success in their Uncertain Future.
The Building Blocks of Wild Card Strategy
Our depth of expertise in each of the four building blocks of Wild Card Strategy prepares your organization . . . to shove Uncertainty aside and plunge head-first into a future you’re actually ready to own!
These uncertainties are “wild cards”—low-probability, high-impact events that appear overnight and permanently disrupt your industry, such as:
- Sudden shifts in the global or local economy
- New technologies and innovations that render current models obsolete
- Changes in government or industry compliance
- New market entrants that don't follow the old rules
To combat these uncertainties, you need a Wild Card Strategy. A Wild Card Strategy prepares you to anticipate threats, mitigate against market shocks, and turn disruptive events into growth opportunities while your competitors are still reacting.
Next Generation Strategic Planning
Wild Card Forecasting
Business Risk Assessment
Next Practices Design
Our Complete Suite of Strategic Solutions
July 10, 2026
Why Most Strategic Plans Aren’t Really “Strategic”
Most strategic plans (including – probably – yours) are actually not “strategic” because they do not fully prepare the organization to successfully realize their vision for the future. So, what’s missing? What actually makes a plan “strategic?”
The Essential Strategic Ingredient:
Strategic plans fail to be genuinely strategic when they neglect to harness the power of The One Thing all businesses and non-profits have in common: Uncertainty. Although Uncertainty manifests itself differently for everyone, it still impacts all businesses and non-profits.
To successfully navigate the future, every organization must proactively confront and tame Uncertainty now. They do that with a strategic plan that anticipates the unforeseen opportunities and threats that lurk in that inevitable Uncertainty and includes strategies to leverage and mitigate them.
SWOT Doesn’t Reveal What is Most Important:
In traditional strategic planning, a Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats analysis should confront future Uncertainty, but virtually never does. Planning teams don’t discuss the true Uncertainty lurking in their organization’s future because their brainstorming is focused on the opportunities and threats they already know about.
Planning and preparing for what you don’t know about is the most important part of a strategic plan because it pre-emptively enables your organization to leverage unknown opportunities and mitigate unknown threats. This requires the planning team to brainstorm “surprises.” In other words, brainstorm what they don’t know . . . that they don’t know.
So, how can SWOT be improved to reveal those surprises when the planning team has no idea what they might be?
Put Our Expertise to Work For Your Business, At No Charge!
We Get It.
We understand that prospective clients want to see our process in action first . . . and you want to see that process apply specifically to your business.
You want to take those results back to your business and use them, without risking anything. In other words, at no charge.
So we invite you to join us for a 60-minute Wild Card Hour, in your office, to discuss your business. During the Hour, we’ll give you – at no charge – the following:
- A plausible Wild Card Opportunity and Wild Card Threat specifically identified for your business
- A Next Practice specifically designed for your business to give you a competitive edge
- Eight business risks specifically identified for your business to address
Each deliverable will include instructions for their use in managing your business and preparing for your future.
When was the last time you got this much value at no charge? Let’s talk.
