The 4 Benefits of Deep Clear Vision For Your Business

Over the past 6 years, I have advised well over 100 business owners at various stages of development. Whether it was a paid engagement with an agency owner with a decade in business and a dozen employees, or a solopreneuer I sat down with over lunch or coffee for some free guidance, one issue has come up constantly: Most founders lack clear DEEP vision.

This becomes evident within the first 2-3 minutes of asking about their company. The lack of clarity usually looks like a long and rambling elevator pitch that meanders through the things they do (in many cases "hope" to do) for their clients. These are often punctuated with several statements like "but I also do" or "I'm kind of like a ______ for my clients."

The lack of depth is sometimes evident from a relatively short statement. I asked an experienced financial planner, not knowing what they did, about their business and they sighed and mumbled "insurance and investments" with a sheepish shrug. Even with 12 years in the business with dozens of highly profitable clients, there was no depth to his description of work. He seemed resigned to the vision of his business as a commodity service VENDOR methodically playing the numbers game to reach clients to serve.

In both cases, the business is making money, but they are reaching out for ways to get their business to grow. Invariably, one of the best ways to unlock the potential for growth is to crystalize a clear, deep vision of what the business should look and FEEL like.

There are 4 Key advantages to taking the time to crystalize your business that lead to intentional revenue growth.

A Stable Foundation

Think of the vision like the skeleton of your business body. The bigger and stronger it is, the bigger and stronger your business can be. Also, it provides the anchor points for all of your business decisions and your sales and marketing language to extend from with certainty.

In reference to the picture above, the vision is like the investing home country that sends the voyage across the ocean. Think about it...Why would anyone invest the time and resources to build a ship (your business) that may take months to complete. Why would they risk the lives of upwards of 40 people (your team) to take a perilous journey into the unknown? One must have a clear vision of the results (your vision...the "what and why") to take on such risk and some reasonable expectation of the path to get there (your mission...the "how").

Structurally, the vision provides the stability for the mission, and the mission provides the stability for all of the decisions to be made in building the ship for that clearly defined purpose. How far are we going? How long should it take to get there? What will we be bringing back? Since that defines the size and shape of the ship, how many people will it take to crew it? What skills do they need? The vision is the starting point for it all as well as the limiting factor on what the business can ever grow to be.

Think about it...If I gave you an armature, a wireframe skeleton, in the size and shape for a bird, could you ever add enough soft clay for it to ever form an elephant? Even if you could, would it be stable? Especially in business, the weight of the world pulls down on anything without a solid foundation. Vision provides that for your growth goals.

Inspiration & Motivation to Sustain Effort

Sticking with the clay model example above, over time, gravity causes soft clay to sag out of shape. The wire skeleton gives support over time. Similarly, in a body, while the muscles of the body (your actions) move the body through space and make up more of what others "see" as the body, they are conformed to the stable skeleton that may look far different by itself. As strong as muscles are, they atrophy extremely fast compared to bones, which are as far stronger and last longer.

With out a strong "Why" behind your business activities, when things get hard, they will start to fail. Your vision will drive you and sustain your efforts.

Putting "Weight Behind Your Words"

Tom Stanfill says in his book that "Your motives are ultimately transparent." In many ways, we "hear with our hearts", meaning the intentions behind our words will be felt more than the words we say...often to the contrary. Your vision will echo through your actions, whether you want it to or not. If your personal ambition or circumstances have caused you to form your vision by default, and not by design, then all of your efforts to convey value will echo with selfishness, or desperation. Others will not gravitate to your message.

Ideally, our vision would include some value for others, some purpose that serves the needs of the people we reach. However, if you are not there, and you are truly building your business to make millions and retire, I'm not telling you that you're wrong. However, if your Vision of how you want that business to look is not clear enough, or big enough for your listener to recognize that you're not in the conversation for their specific individual sale, your words may sound hollow, or needy. The Depth of your vision, whether it is altruistic or not, puts weight behind your words.

Guiding Your Incremental Decisions - Picking Your North Star

The last thing that is critical for any business is a framework for decision making. Especially in diverse teams who needs to work together to enable customer success, they need a baseline for how they make decisions, something that they can point to as a reference point for where this decision will take them.

To explain the image above, the coastline the ship is leaving from is the first reference point. The guiding star that the ship will follow is in reference to that point for the ship to reach it's destination. So when confronted with a decision to go right or left, the "North Star" is a questioning framework that is derived from that vision. This will allow the decision maker to ask "Will this action lead to ___________?" as a tie breaker between the two choices. While the vision will be a long, clear thought, a full paragraph in some cases, the North Star that you as the business maker uses to guide and direct the ship is a subset of that broader vision and mission. Vision -- Mission -- North Star.

While this description of these four points seems "simple", it is not "easy". Visioning exercises are some of the hardest homework assignments that I have ever been given, but also the most rewarding. Take some time this week to look at your business and define a starting point that gives Stability, Inspiration, Substance, and Guidance to your journey. Good Luck!