Are you clear on why you run your business? Do you know what your purpose is?

If you answered YES to these questions, that’s fantastic. But I have another more important question for you. 

Does everybody else know your why and your purpose?

At my business Port Macquarie Performing Arts, we spend a lot of time teaching dance. That’s what we do and for years—that’s what we talked about. “Come to us and you can have a dance class.”

On the inside, we knew what we were actually doing was building confident young people. We knew it because we focussed on it in our studio in every class, every single day. But we never thought to communicate that with our audience. 

When we did start to communicate our why and our purpose to our entire community — GAME CHANGER. 

Because suddenly people were communicating back with us and saying things like “Oh my goodness. Sally is so much more confident this year after taking on that extra class.” 

Our customers and the broader community were suddenly invested in or interested in our business. They both respected and appreciated everything we stood for. 

So I ask you these questions:

• What is the why for your business? 

• What is your business about? 

• Do all the key stakeholders in your business, your customers, your clients, your team, all know what that why is? 

• Do you have a company vision or mission? 

• Do you have company values that you will stick to? (Or are they something that you put together when you had a professional development day, and then you filed them somewhere in your computer, or stuck them in a drawer?) 

• Are your vision, mission and values visible? (Are they up on the walls in your office? Are they on the bottom of your email signature?)

People step up when they understand the bigger picture.

You’ll find people are so much more on board with new ideas and new innovations within your business if they too understand the bigger picture and the bigger why. 

When you get clear on your messaging, you will first and foremost find that people within your team will want to take on more responsibility. This will free up your time so you then have the ability to innovate, or have time to yourself, or time to increase your customer base, or improve your revenue—whatever your goals for your business are. 

But that won’t happen if everybody doesn’t have the buy-in. 

So consider this your friendly reminder to get really clear on your messaging. 

• What is it that you do? 

• Why do you do it? 

• Why is it important in the world?

And make sure your team and your community knows it as well.