A Purposeful Vision: The Catalyst for Business Progress, Momentum and Profit
"A goal without a purpose is a journey without meaning."
Having a purposeful vision is fundamental to any business that wants to move beyond just operating day to day, month to month. A business with a purposeful vision and clear goals is vital to create the clarity, motivation and momentum required to act on the granular and sometimes mundane tasks that are required to bring these ideas to life.
In this article, I’ll share what your vision needs to include, questions to ask yourself as well as the practical approach that prompts a business that is exciting, fulfilling and meaningful in addition to being profitable.
Your Vision:
To preface this at the start, when presented with a vision exercise many people can get caught up spending more time dreaming up their vision while missing the bravado that translates any of it to their business.
The areas below are what I’ve found to be the core elements of a business owner's vision that is practical and drives action and progress. Take your mind through these and paint the picture of your vision by putting your first thoughts to paper.
Your vision needs to be both short and long term. A long term vision as far as your eye can see will give your business direction, this could be 5+ years from now and beyond. However we still need that shorter vision that is closer to current day, what does 1-2 years from now also look like? Having clarity on these will help you set the goals that support your vision.
For example, your big vision for your business could include being the leader in your market in a decade from now, but your short term vision is about being the best-known in your city. For others, being a world-respected coach and number 1 best selling author is the long term vision, with the short term vision to work with 30 clients per year.
Your vision will evolve. You can almost count on the fact that your vision is going to evolve, what you dream up today is going to be different 1, 5, 10 years from now and that’s part of the process. You still want to create a current vision that’s as clear, exciting and purposeful as you can get it with real, tangible meaning to your life.
It helps to not throw your vision to the curb everytime life or business happens but rather see that as time goes on, the feedback of life and business gives you insights into how you can update your vision. As long as you are continuously moving forward towards today’s current best vision, you’re always going to be heading in the right direction with the future pulling you forward rather than the day-to-day keeping you stuck.
Your vision needs to be personal. What separates your business from any other business is your unique vision and the underlying reasons for it. This is your life and your business and you need to create it around your needs. When you allow yourself to do this, the by-product of it is going to be genuine, authentic and long-lasting for the clients you serve.
For example, when I started my business in 2015 I did so because I wanted a career that worked around my daughter. Being a single mum I was tired of being absent for 50-60 hours per week even if I was providing for my daughter, I knew there had to be a better way. I was able to create a business that worked around my needs, it was personal and this was enough reason for me to build a business that helped me bring my vision to life and so far last the test of time (or a pandemic, recession and the common statistic of 80% of businesses failing in the first 5 years).
Your vision needs to serve your clients. At the start and end of the day, your business is there to serve the people who gratefully pay you and the joy in this is you have say in what this looks like. The questions below will be helpful for you to create the vision that serves your clients.
What’s the business you want to create for your clients? Why does your business exist? What purpose does it have? What do you want to create for your clients? Who do you want to be to your clients? Who do you thoroughly enjoy working with? What impact do you want your business to have?
Your vision needs to serve you as the business owner. In equal measure to your business serving your clients, it too needs to serve you as the business owner particularly if you want to create an entity that fuels your life rather than takes from it. Below there are questions that will help you to clarify how your business can serve you too.
How can your business serve you? What do you need to earn? When do you work and not work? How do you work? What responsibilities do you want? Are there any lifestyle perks your business can facilitate? Where do you want to work from? Who do you want to work around? How would you like your business to make your life better?
As a business and marketing consultant, asking my clients “why are we doing any of this” (which frames their vision), has resulted in eye-opening clarity, motivation, momentum and seamlessly leads the way into setting business goals that are relevant.
In my next article I’ll share the next step in this process to help businesses set effective goals in their business which drive action and success.
In the meantime, listen to my top 10 podcast Good Marketing, Good Business on your favourite podcast listening platform or click below:
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