I was at tea with a friend of mine the other day who is also a business owner. He had had some struggles recently, and we were both agreeing that he needed a clear vision for his business.
He stopped and looked at me, “My partner wouldn’t agree with you. She would ask, ‘What do you *mean* by a vision?'”
I stopped, silent. I’m not a naturally visionary person. I have trouble thinking further than six months out and I don’t dream great big dreams of world domination. My natural tendency is to tunnel into details and get’r’done.
However, the last five years of building a team and stepping into leadership has convinced me how important a vision is. It’s also helped me come to my own understanding of what a vision is, especially for practical, hands-on type people that don’t live with their heads at cloud level.
So I proceeded to tell my friend the three parts of a practical, actionable, profitable yet high-flying vision for a small business.
Why Is A Vision Important?
When I first approached the topic of “vision” I was really resistant to it. The two models I had seen, big, corporate visions of being “first” in some world-domination plan, or dreamy, idealistic views of complete transformation and ushering in a new age left me doubtful.
As a small business owner, there was zero chance of, let alone any interest in, any kind of “world domination.” Similarly, the only way to complete large, lasting change as a small business was to count on thousands, millions of other people also doing good work. No matter how successful Heart of Business became, it was only ever going to be a small business. Yet cumulatively our work can make a tremendous impact.
I had written some early insights about vision before that had come from my studies of globally-recognized spiritual leaders. Great, useful insights, but it was missing some practical pieces about what makes the business profitable and sustainable as a business.
You can have vision, but if you’re in business, you also want a business vision, one that serves your business as a business.
Without a vision it becomes really hard to make strategic decisions. It also becomes hard for anyone else to work with you as a teammate, because they don’t know where you are going. They are stuck constantly asking you for direction or decision-making.
It’s also really hard to diagnose what might be going wrong in your business. It’s all too easy to get blown around by the latest fad, someone’s crazy suggestions, or just how you’re feeling on a bad day.
If you take on the work of identifying for yourself these three elements of a small business vision, it will make business-building in the coming years much easier for you.
The 3 Elements of a Small Business Vision
First: Who You Serve and What Problem You Solve
One of my earliest insights into business remains at the heart of almost everything. A business is defined not by what you do, which is a mistake many fall into. Rather, a business is defined by who you serve and what problem you are helping them solve.
Currently our Alumni Community is working on exactly this as the monthly focus, which I call your One Compelling Sentence. People struggle without this for years sometimes, but once it’s identified, you can finally start to get some momentum in your business.
It’s one of the key ingredients that our star practitioners Jason and Yollana use to help their individual clients double their revenue.
Second: Why It’s Important to Serve Those People
Why do you care about these people and the problem they are struggling with? How do you see it contributing to a better, more vibrant world?
When you know your why, it helps you keep from getting too caught in just chasing money. It helps keep your heart buoyed when you are working on projects that are tedious but necessary. It helps you make decisions about who to work with.
It also inspires clients and team members. People can band around a larger “why.” It helps your business contribute to a mission in the world.
For us here at Heart of Business, I know that if small businesses with heart can flourish, it means that the economy is being redirected, at least in part, away from businesses that aren’t serving life. It means that more people are getting the healing they need. It means that more healing of the damage caused by business over the last few centuries is happening.
I talk about the three reasons for love in business in the video on this page, and it contains our why.
Third: Your Revenue Model
Simply said, a revenue model is how your business brings in money most effectively and sustainably while still serving the first two parts of your mission.
Many business owners have not worked out their revenue model beyond, “Well, I work with clients and they pay me. Sometimes I do a workshop.”
A revenue model directly supports the rest of your vision. One business owner I know has a belief in herself as a catalyst. Consequently her business model does not include long-term support of clients, but more in-depth, intense, shorter offers like one-day workshops, or books.
Here at Heart of Business we have a real commitment to see people heal as well as be more effective. We take real joy in supporting people as they go through the process of both learning and healing.
Consequently our services include one-on-one individual work over months, a year-long in-depth group program, and an Alumni Community with many spiritual resources. We do offer short duration workshops and books and courses because they serve people, too, in tremendous ways.
But we make sure that we aren’t leaving people in the lurch who need more support so we can truly serve our mission. We structure our profitability around that mission.
It’s Taken Awhile
When I look back over the more than a decade that I’ve been at this, I can see how the kernels of all three elements were present, but it took me awhile to identify them and consciously develop and focus on them.
In fact, a miss-step in not identifying the third element for us caused a nearly disastrous decision that took months to recover from.
Having all three of these in place means that we’ve been humming along, picking up steam, and having fun. Team members can function without a lot of direction (read: interference) from me, and we’re growing and developing.
Two questions for you. First, what do you think? Do you think I’ve got it right, or not? Second, please will you share any or all of the elements you can identify in your own business with us? Or perhaps there’s another element you think I missed?
Share what you’ve got! Add your comment right below.
p.s. Need to Have a Healthy Relationship With Money?
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3 Responses
Mark, I think this is useful, but to me what you are defining here is not a vision but a mission. A mission should specify what it is you do, and for whom. It should rest on a viable revenue model, and on why it matters. A vision is a painting, if you will, of a future you are creating that goes beyond the mere success of your business. And another key element is your corporate values, which limit the means you will employ to achieve your lofty ends. I can offer my company’s mission, vision, and values as an example:
The mission of Saiff Solutions is to provide the best product documentation available, on an efficient, cost-effective basis, and to provide excellent outbound call center services, to companies ranging from startups to the Fortune 500, using methodologies and approaches that incorporate in every moment our corporate values of customer service, excellence, respect, integrity, honesty, communication, responsibility, learning, inclusion and non-discrimination. By holding ourselves to a higher standard, we are building our long term success and our capacity to deliver on our vision.
Our vision is here: http://saiffsolutions.com/home/about/vision.
and our values are explained here: http://saiffsolutions.com/home/our-values.
Hi Barry- thanks for reaching out! Actually, I think what you are calling vision is contained in my second element: “Why it’s important to serve whom you are serving.” That is the vision for me. The mission you write above doesn’t include any of the why, although your why is included in your vision. I just put them in different places.
“Having a vision isn’t enough. A vision without action is called a hallucination.” A speaker once said to the audience while our class attended some youth convention, I think I’ve heard this somewhere a few years back. Without the point of action regarding an awesome idea you have will fail your expectations as a businessman. Proper management towards your actions and a little background on crisis management can do wonders.