There was a day where you woke up one morning and said, ‘You know what? I want to start my own business.’ And most businesses start this way. I don’t’ know if you’ve read as many books as I have, but in particular there’s one book called The E-Myth by a fellow called Michael Gerber. In that book, he talks about the e-seizure or the entrepreneurial seizure. This is how we start a company. We get this bright idea one day that we’re working for someone else making them all this money, and we go, ‘You know what? I’m going to do this for myself.’ We go and we register a business name, and we start up our own business in some sort of delusion that it’s actually going to be a simple thing to do. And it’s not!
Why is having a vision really important? Well it gives everybody clarity over where it is you’re heading. It’s sort of like, if you can imagine the day your business died, what would be spoken about it at the eulogy? How would your company be remembered? I think that’s what a company vision is all about.
Be clear on what your business is trying to achieve
A big part of being successful in business is being clear on what it is you’re trying to achieve or what it is you’re going to be remembered for. This is what company vision is all about. In this video, I’m going to talk to you about creating a company vision. I’m going to give you my four top tips for making sure your vision is empowering, exciting, and works for your company.
#1. Be clear and Concise
There’s a lot of things out there on the Internet, and here’s one example with this YouTube video, telling you how to create your vision. Probably worse, telling you what should be in your company vision. You can use a template, you can copy somebody else’s, but it doesn’t matter what you write in your vision, it has to be yours. You have to own it and it has to be concise, it has to be clear about what it is you stand for.
It should mention your values as a company. It should mention what it is the company is going to do for everybody that’s involved in the business. It should talk about what is my company here designed to do because a company’s not just about making you successful, making you money, it’s about providing a vehicle to many people to benefit from. So you think of it like this; you’ve got your employees. They’re customers of the business, they need to be benefiting from it in some way from the business. You yourself, you’re a customer of the business, how do you benefit out of the business? Your suppliers, how do they benefit from your business? And of course your customers, how do they benefit from your business? Your vision should encapsulate all four groups there.
#2. It should excite people
This brings me to my second point, it should excite them all. Your vision should excite you. When you tell somebody about what your company stands for or what your vision is, it should excite you. It should send shivers down your back and not only that, it should excite your team. It should excite your customers and your suppliers and make them want to deal with you. It’s a big shame in business these days, a lot of people start a company but they don’t have a clear vision of what it is they’re trying to achieve, or what it is they support or what they stand for.
A company is an entity, it needs a set of values. It needs to be able to stand on its own right and be measured against its vision and its values. So it has to excite you, it has to excite your team. A good vision will help you in the recruiting process. If you’ve got a really strong, concise and clear vision, when you recruit and you tell prospective team members about what it is that your company stands for and what you’re setting out to achieve, that will excite them about working for you. Same thing with suppliers. Suppliers want to know that they’re providing their products or services to a company that they believe in or at least have their values partially in line, serving them. Of course, your customers are going to want to know what your vision is. Not only know what it is, but experience it. So you should use it to excite all of those four groups, yourself, your team, your suppliers and your customers. It should excite everybody!
#3. It’s your Horizon
Now my next thing, my tip number three, when you’re coming up with your vision, it’s sort of like the horizon way out there in the distance. You don’t see too many visions that are about, ‘Hey, we’re going to turn over a million dollars this year.’ That’s not a vision, that’s a goal. That’s a budget. Your vision needs to be like the horizon. The horizon you can never get to. You can always see it, but you can never get there. There are times you don’t see it, and they’re the cloudy days or the days of low visibility and that’s going to happen in your business as well, but the vision of your company should be like the horizon. Something you can see in the distance, but you’re never ever going to get there.
As you march towards it, it moves the same distance away because it is one of those things that you’re unlikely to achieve. Our vision in MaxMyProfit is ‘world abundance through business education.’ World abundance, that’s a huge call. Huge, huge call. How are we going to educate every business owner in the entire world, the entire globe and create world abundance? And there’s all these third-world, poverty-stricken countries. How are we going to create world abundance? It’s a fantastic vision, and it’s an exciting vision. But it’s like the horizon, it’s way in the distance.
#4. Communicate it
It’s no good having an exciting vision if you don’t communicate it with everybody. When I say communicate it, do it on a regular basis. Write your vision up and stick it in your office. Stick it in everyone’s face. Put it on the computer screen savers, stick it in their cubicles and their desk. Send it out on the bottom of every bit of marketing you do to your customers or your prospects. Put it into your team job descriptions. Communicate your vision everywhere because it really is about telling the rest of the world what it is you stand for and what are the values of the company you’ve created.
There’s my top four tips for creating your vision
Hopefully that’s helped you get clear on what you need to do in order to come up with a clear and concise company vision. If you have any more questions regarding how to create your company vision or even share your company feedback to get some feedback, simply put those details below in the comments section and we will get back to you.
About the Author
Ben Fewtrell is a sought-after Business Coach, Keynote Speaker and trainer who has featured in Virgin’s Inflight Magazine and Entertainment Portal, SKY Business and “Secrets of Top Business Builders Exposed”. He is also the host of the popular Business Brain Food Podcast where he interviews leading experts on anything and everything business.
