Having a clear vision, mission and values for your business is something that regularly gets pushed aside into the “one day I’ll do that” basket. But what if I was to tell you that these “big picture” concepts are actually the building blocks of every successful business?

You need to have a vision for where you want to take your business in the future in order to convince people to come along on the journey with you. 

You need to have a mission to act as your navigational tool; deciding what daily actions you are going to take to achieve your vision. 

You need to have values that you stand by to serve you in making those day-to-day decisions as a business owner. 

When you identify the purpose of your work, determining the goals you need to accomplish in order to get there becomes exponentially easier! It’s like the light tunnel that keeps you on track and underpins all of your decisions, behaviours and strategies in business.

Sure, you can have a business without a vision, mission and values, but you’ll find yourself constantly having to justify yourself and your decisions because there’s no greater understanding of your WHY; who are you serving and why does your business exist? 

Even if you think your overall driver in business is MONEY, you’re only going to achieve that if you give others, such as staff, stakeholders, clients and so on, a reason to buy into you and your business in the first place. If you don’t give your community something to believe in and become invested in, the “making money” goal is never going to happen.

OKAY! Have I convinced you of the importance of vision, mission and values yet? GREAT. 

Today we’re going to focus on developing your business VISION. (Over the coming weeks we’ll move on to mission and values.)

VISION: The broad view of how your company is going to leave an impact on customers and the greater community for years to come. 

I want you to answer these questions:

• Why did you start your business? Where did that desire and drive come from? 

• Who are you serving? 

• What’s the best part of your job? 

• What do you love about what you do? 

• What do you do well in your business? (What positive feedback do you receive?)

• What kind of impact do you want to have on your clients or customers? 

• What kind of impact do you want to have on your community? 

A vision statement is made up of 5 different parts: 

• Who is doing it? (Stacey’s Dance Studio)

• What are they doing? (Teaching dance classes)

• Who are they doing it to? (Young people in the XX area)

• How are they doing it? (Through quality dance education and training)

• What is the impact? (Giving them skills to pursue dance as a professional career)

Next, we put all of this into a statement. 

For example, “Stacey’s Dance Studio is teaching dance classes to young people in the XX area through quality dance education and training, giving them skills to pursue dance as a professional career.  

Now it’s your turn!

Let me know how you go, and feel free to reach out if you need a little support along the way.

Next week we’ll move on to tackling our MISSION statements.