Make Your Vision Come Alive
I’ll bet that when you started your business you didn’t just decide to start it because you “wanted to make money”. Even if you didn’t formally work on it or you may not even have been conscious of it, I’ll bet that when you started your business you had an idea of what you wanted to achieve at the end of the day.
You might have called it your dream or your goal, or perhaps your vision, but I’m sure that deep down inside you had a very clear picture of what you and your business would be like at the end of the day. You “saw” yourself serving your customers, helping them and giving them solutions, you “felt” the pride and the achievement you would put into the business, and I think you would have smiled when you thought of how you would feel and the lifestyle it would give you.
Am I right?
That feeling and that idea are what I call your business vision. How can you harness those deep down desires into making your business successful?
Your vision can be a powerful motivator. Whenever you feel depressed or tired at the hours you are putting into building your business, your vision reminds you why it is all worth it.
When you have big decisions to make, or when you feel some apprehension at how the direction you are taking will work out, it’s good to be able to fall back on the vision and make your decision or take courage, based on what it will get you.
Your informal idea can be made even more powerful by writing it down as a formal reminder you can pull out and refer to from time to time.
It is an even more powerful tool if you have staff.
A strong vision statement declares where you want to go, so people who don’t agree will step off and people who are attracted to it will join you. In this way, the vision statement makes sure that the right people are on your bus and heading in the same direction. A strong vision statement provides the answers to all sorts of day to day questions from your people:
“Who should I hire?”
“Should I offer the customer the refund?”
“Which supplier should I sign up with?”
A strong vision statement answers these questions because it indicates what kind of people you want in your business, what your customer service depends on, what values you expect from people you do business with and a hundred other things. Using a strong vision statement you can say to your people “if you do something or say something or decide something that is in sync with our vision then you can’t have gone wrong.”
But how do you define your vision statement and make it come alive every day?
This week I discuss how to do this.
Why don’t you try it out?
If you really are serious about growing your business – your enjoyable business – don’t ignore the power of a vision statement. Don’t ignore how you can define what that visions statement means in day to day behaviour and specified goals.
Take a few hours to work out what your vision really means in real life from the different perspectives. If you are able to obtain clarity from the four different ways of looking at it, you will be able to explain it and specify what is the right thing to do in any situation.
If you want to know more, go over to my website at teikoh.com and trawl through the many free tips, tools and other resources that you can implement immediately. I also use these practical tips in my online courses, such as the use of the vision statement in my one-day mini-business plan course.
Get over there and get it done!
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