Some business owners know they need a vision but don’t know where to start. Some have a vision but have never articulated it clearly. Some have a vision but wonder why it doesn’t seem to help. We designed this guide to help business owners define a powerful business vision.

But before we get into the guide, let’s start with another place you may be as a business owner in relation to defining your vision - why bother? It can seem like a lot of work. Some of us may even have negative associations with the exercise with experience in the corporate sphere where the mission statement may be little more than a nice slogan.

why your vision matters

The bottom line with why vision matters is that there is a direct connection between vision, energy and action.

Almost all businesses start with excitement and a whirlwind of action.  Why?  

• Is it because the person is getting paid a lot of money?  No, probably they have never been so badly paid in their lives.

• Is it because there are incredible deadlines to meet?  Almost never. The business launches when the business owner wants.

• Is it because everyone is cheering from the sidelines?  No. Hopefully the business owner has had a few encouraging messages but just as likely there is a Greek chorus of worry and questions.

The answer of course is that at that moment the business owner is very connected to their vision.  

This is just human nature.  The future we see coming at us has much more say about our mood, our spirits in the moment than what is happening in the moment and at the moment of getting going the business owner is excited about what they can see in the future.

Holidays are another good demonstration of this phenomenon. You may be in rainy London with a hundred emails to answer but if you are going on holiday that evening, rather than feeling down and stressed, you are almost certainly excited and in a frenzy of action.

And equally on the last day of holiday sitting on the beach in the sun with a cocktail in hand, the mood will be sombre thinking about rainy London and the emails to come.

The point is that the future we see coming towards us gives us our mood and our mood massively affects our actions and the likelihood of their success.

So business owners need a vision, an exciting future they see as possible that will get them out of bed in the morning. In the end that same vision is also important to everyone else, your staff, your customers and even your suppliers. When everyone is excited by that you will fly, without that you will struggle to get off the ground.

your vision

Step 1 in our process is for us to find a vision for ourselves that is exciting.  If we are not excited about anything in our business, heaven help us trying to get anyone else to be.

That doesn’t mean we need to be someone who can talk passionately for hours about our business.  Some people are extroverts, some are not.  What matters is that we are excited.  That excitement, the belief in what we are doing will communicate in a million ways whether or not we bend people’s ear or not.

So a vision that makes us excited is extremely important although as we will see that is not sufficient.

At the most basic level it is a picture for what our life looks like, where we live, what we wear, where we go on holiday, who is with you, what we are doing.  

Some of parts of this will not be relevant to your business but some most definitely are and it is very important that the vision includes:

Money - You need to know how much money you need your business to provide.  Therefore we need to answer questions such as:

• How much money does the business need to provide you on a monthly basis for you to feel it is worth the time, hassle, risk?

• How long are you prepared to wait for it to get you to that place?

• How much does the business need to provide when you exit?

Time - A business can eat up your life so we need to define:

• How much time is it ok for you to work in the business?

• How long are you prepared to wait before you are free of it?

Fulfilment - If your business gives you time and money but no fulfilment in what you are doing and what is getting accomplished in the business, it will never work.  The business needs to inspire us.

The purpose, the mission of the business needs to flow from the purpose that inspires you and in a way the money and the time follow on from that.

There are many ways to approach defining what fufills you but the one we recommend is to identify your individual purpose in life by looking at your purpose in the sense of your function.

For example the purpose of a cup is to hold water. The purpose of sellotape is to stick things together. Our standpoint needs to be that we have a unique purpose in the world and to define that.

This purpose is not a job title or profession. It is not a job description. It is about how you make a difference in the world. A good way into this is the recurring positive themes in your life - like creativity, nurturing, challenge or fun. Your purpose will be related to the common thread that you keep bringing to the party.

When I did this work I was lucky enough to work with business coach, Gabriel Flores*, who instructed me to formulate this purpose for my life in the following format:

I am a __________ for ____________________.

In the first part I was invited to define a role for myself - leader, partner, stand for and in the second my purpose.

After trying a lot of different things and honing the words I arrived at:

‘I am a partner for people being expressed, happy and free.’

YOur business vision

Having your own purpose expressed in that way makes moving to the business vision much easier, because we need to define our business vision in much the same way.

Obviously businesses provide goods and services, hopefully they also make money but none of this is the purpose we are referring to. The purpose we need to get to is something that excites and moves people beyond these things.

So Step 2 is to define your business vision as purpose or mission statement. Remember it must above all excite you but it now needs to have the potential to excite all the constituent stakeholders - customers, staff, suppliers, investors and even the wider community.

This is the Why of your business Simon Sinek refers to and again there are many ways to express it but the one we like best is called an Entreprise Promise and is expressed:

We are______for ___________________.

This statement may well take crafting, testing, honing and deliberating about but don’t be tempted to skip this step. The acid test will be that it excites you and others.

Here is the one we created for Co-:

‘We are partners for people and communities to be expressed, happy and free through business.’

It is a mission statement that informs our marketing, our recruitment, our services, pretty much everything we do.

What, who, where, when and how

Armed with the ‘Why’ of our business we can now move to Step 3 which is to start to flesh out some other key aspects of it:

• What products and services: What are the products and services we say will fulfil this vision?  What is the price that allows us to fulfil it?

• Who: Who are the people that will buy into this vision?  What therefore is our target market? Who are the people we need to come work for us?  

• Where/When? What are the logistical components we need to put in place for this?

• How? What are the raw materials, tools and systems we need to use?

Aligning these with our business purpose is imperative because everything now needs to serve that purpose.

Business Plan

The final Step 4 in our guide is to work up a business plan. Thus far the work has been conceptual, we now need to know if it is practical. Ultimately we need to loop back and make sure it gives you the time and money you want. Without that your excitement about the difference you are making in the world will drain away very rapidly.

Road Map

We recommend to start with a bit of a road map showing some milestones that would show we are on the right track.

This needs to give us a picture of key features of what success looks like in the medium term, things like:

• Revenue

• Profit

• Employees

• Products

• Facilities

• Outlets

• Your time

• Your money

At this point it can be tempting to create what you think you should be aiming for rather than what will authentically excite you. Big may not be what you really want. Remember this is the plan you are going to invite the rest of the world excited about with you.

Budget

When an architect designs a house, they move from concept to drawing.  Your budget is the equivalent of the drawings.  You need to know if this vision is going to hang together at a practical level and for that you need numbers.

The budget draws together your customers, your suppliers, your staff, yourself.  Hopefully when you put in the price, the number of sales, the cost of sales, the systems and resources and systems, the people it is workable.  If not it’s back to the drawing board.

The budget represents you designing the pathway that will take you to the place where you fulfil your vision, it is not only important to be excited about the destination you are going to but you also need to know how you will get there. 

Going back to the analogy of being excited about the holiday you are about to go on, you need to know the trains are running, the flight is booked, there is money in the bank to pay for the cocktails.  Without that your holiday is just a nice idea.

Acknowledgement

*This blog would not be complete without an acknowledgement to Gabriel Flores who was our guide when we were defining our business vision.

Thank you Gabriel, we are forever in your debt.