Start up Business Series: Creating your Vision

However, as a small business owner, you should also incorporate your own personal vision; where you see yourself in the future, be it living in a 6-bed house with a pool; owning a rolls royce, having a butler, or a holiday home, or simply not having to work at all and live on the beach drinking cocktails. Because, it’ll be your business that achieves this for you.

Imagination is your most powerful tool

What do you daydream about now? And what future did you daydream about as a child?

Make time to daydream and ignore anyone who mocks you. The mocking will stop when you’re able to make your dreams a wonderful reality – and they’re not.

Free thinking is vital in business. Daydreaming is good. Ideas are the seedlings of reality which need to be nurtured into real, living, breathing enterprises.

Being a business owner means harnessing the power of your imagination constantly. Imagination has no boundaries or constraints. Great ideas are central to you and your business. Let your imagination breathe.

We’re not saying turn into one of those loopy weirdo’s who constantly stare at the sky and wear grass shoes. We’re saying that sometimes you need to step back and look at your business from a different perspective. Always remember why you are here and where you want to go. Set aside a few hours a week thinking time (maybe in the bath or when you take the dog for a walk).

Creating your Vision

To start with your vision, we don’t need a fancy Vision Statement like the big corporates do. This is for you, and only you. No one will see this (unless you show it to them), and you won’t get recognition for creating a Vision Statement that says you’ll rid the world of fossil fuels. If you want to be selfish, be selfish. After all, starting a business means you can; as we learnt previously in the series, it’s going to be tough.

For a few years now, I’ve met with a good friend of mine weekly in what we refer to as a ‘Mastermind’. We discuss what’s been good that week (wins), any challenges we’ve faced (discussion points) and set goals for the week ahead that we want to achieve. This has its own merits, but as well as this, we both created ‘Big Hairy Goals’ (as in, big & scary). These are large goals we want to achieve within 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years and 10 years (if you ask nicely, I’ll show you my Big Hairys). I’ve also incorporated this in my business and ask this of my team.

We do this because we’ve found it works; it keeps us inspired, it keeps us on track and, ultimately, it means we achieve those Big Hairys.

Whenever I’ve had a crappy day, I look at my Big Hairys and it reminds me why I’m doing this, and gets me going again.

Therefore, to create your Vision, I’d suggest you get down some Big Hairys. They should be business and personal.

You don’t need a fancy layout, I’d suggest simply a Google Doc (so you can access anywhere) with the 1, 2, 3, 5 & 10 years as headings, and put bullet points for each one.

When you hit them, strike them out and highlight them red.

Once you’re done, show your Big Hairys to your significant other and any loved ones you see fit. See what they think and if they have any suggestions. After all, your Big Hairys will more than likely include them too.

Then, make sure you review your Big Hairys at least once a week, and change, strike out and add as and when you see fit.

Remember to dream.

What to do now

Get busy with your Big Hairys!

You’ll need your Big Hairys for later in on the series. I’ll explain when we get there.

Also, look out for our next blog in the series – when to start your business which is here.

If you missed our last blog in the series, How to build the right Business Model, you can check that our here.