1. Vision
“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight, but no vision.” – Helen Keller
Creating your vision may be the most important thing you will do when starting your business. This entire ebook could be dedicated to vision. We will cover several important aspects of vision here.
What do you want from your business? What type of businessman or businesswoman do you want to become? How many people do you want to impact? What levels of success do you want to achieve? Do you want to be a leader in your industry and dominate your market? What type of relationships do you want to build and nurture? How big do you want to grow your business? What are your financial goals for this year, over the next 5 years, or in 10 years? What will be the identity of your brand or business? What does your ideal customer look like?
How you answer those questions will dictate how you run your business. Not taking the time to answer those questions can substantially decrease your efficiency and leave you trying to navigate treacherous waters without any guiding light. Everyone wants their business to be successful. Success is a relative term. You have to define exactly what that means to you.
If an uber picks you up, you have to give the driver a specific address in order to get there in the shortest amount of time. You cannot expect to reach the destination quickly by giving the driver a vicinity and saying, “keep driving, I will know it when I find it.” Don’t you want to get there as soon as possible, in order to have more of that precious asset you can’t make or buy more of? The only way to do that is to know exactly where you want to go.
A clear quantifiable goal is necessary to be able to reverse engineer your revenue or sales goals, and calculate the needed investments in your marketing. To give you a very simple example to illustrate, let’s say your revenue goal for 2019 is to reach $300K in gross revenues for the year. Of course, there may be seasonality swings that affect your calculation, but on average you would have to gross about $25K per month to reach that $300K annual revenue goal. That $25K could be a number that you just shoot for every month, but how can you drill down further to actually know how to achieve it?
It will be different for every industry or business model, but no matter the type of business, you can always get more specific than that. Calculate the weekly or daily goals. Then, once you have those numbers, you can analyze further to see the bare minimum you have to do every day in order to reach them. If you sell $100 items, then you may need to sell 8 or 9 every single day. If your customer acquisition cost(CAC) is $10 per client/sale, then you may need to invest $80 per day in your marketing. If you are generating leads through online ads and you know your cost-per-click (CPC), your click-through rate (CTR), and your conversation rate, you can calculate how much you should set your daily ad budget to in order to reach your daily revenue goals.
These are highly simplified scenarios, but the point is to get an idea of what you need to do monthly, weekly and daily in order to make that annual number goal more tangible. Knowing how to get to the goal makes the goal mentally more attainable, and it starts with the vision.
Another aspect of your vision you should clearly define is your ideal customer. Know exactly who you want to serve. Define your target market and do your demographic research. Then, take it a step further to detail the exact characteristics of your target customer. Knowing this information will help you craft an appropriate and relevant marketing campaign and will allow you to make it laser targeted to your ideal customer. When you can do this, you will bring in more of your ideal customers giving you more control over who you do business with, and allow you to spend your advertisement dollars more efficiently.
So, I urge you to ask yourself these types of questions and answer them with as much specificity as possible. To the smallest details, invest the time to set the crystal clear vision for your business. Use your imagination. It’s not childish, nor a waste of time, to daydream and visualize your goals to know exactly what it feels like to have achieved them(as long as you are willing to take the necessary action). Know the exact feeling of the experience as if it is already happening. Feel the exact overwhelming feeling of gratitude because your business is thriving and you are hitting all your targets and timelines. To practice this is to know exactly where you are going and already know what it feels like to get there.
When you have already gone through a vivid emotional experience in your conscious mind, your subconscious accepts it as an experience and does not differentiate between real or imagined. When you practice this visualization exercise consistently, this automatically elevates your perception, your belief, and your behavior.
So let’s summarize our first tip. See the end result, the vision. Know exactly what it looks like. Focus on that vision daily. Know exactly what you have to do daily in order to achieve it. Take action daily. Know exactly what it feels like to have achieved it. Focus on that feeling daily. Focus, not only with your attention, but your intention. What you focus on expands and with faith and consistent action towards your vision, you will no doubt achieve it. It does not happen overnight, but every day that you do this, you will be helping yourself move closer to it.
If you are in business already, you have already reached a major milestone in the journey to achieving your vision. Taking action to launch or acquire a business is not the first step, and while it may be the most exciting, it can also be the scariest. (Making the decision that you will do it is first). So, if you have already put your fear aside to take the risk of starting a business, Congratulations! Venturing into uncertainty is no easy undertaking. Building a business or brand from nothing and making it into something substantial is an incredibly rewarding experience.
If you have been in business for 10, 20, 30 years, you are already doing the right things. Congratulations on the longevity you have already experienced. Keep setting grander visions.
