Your Business Vision Statement – From Your Big ‘Why’ to Your Future

When it comes to keeping yourself motivated, inspired, and driven to achieve your business goals, as well as inspiring and motivating others, the keys are to:

1. Know your big ‘why’ – “the purpose, cause or belief that drives every one of us” – (Simon Sinek),
2. Have a vision statement for your business – a picture of the ideal future you want to generate for yourself and others,
3. Have a mission statement – a picture of how you are going to achieve your vision, and
4. Have a written list of your core business values that highlight what you stand for and provide a code of conduct.

In recent posts we have focused on the importance of your big ‘why’. For example, in ‘Unlock Your ‘Why’ to Ignite Your Life and Your Business’ we discussed the importance of knowing your ‘why’, with one of the reasons being that it inspires, motivates and drives you.

Your Business Vision Statement

The next step is to have a vision statement for your business. Your big ‘why’ links into this as your ‘vision’ demonstrates the fulfilment of your big “why”.

Here’s a quote from Steven Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”:

“How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and, keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most.”

Just as ‘knowing your why’ is a motivator and driver for you, a written vision statement is a great way to provide clarity and maintain focus with your personal vision, and it follows that having a written vision statement is important for your business for the same reasons.

Here is a quote from an article titled “The 101 Most Inspiring Vision Statement Examples For 2022!” by Tom Wright, on Jan 16, 2022 and published at https://www.cascade.app/blog/examples-good-vision-statements

“A vision statement is an aspirational statement made by an organization that articulates what they would like to achieve. Furthermore, the vision guides the direction of the organization’s efforts.”

This article also speaks about the difference between Vision Statements and Mission Statements: “There can be some confusion when it comes to what the difference between vision and mission statements is. Simply put, A company’s vision statement represents the future position the company desires to be in. Whereas, a company’s mission statement is a definition of the company’s business state and objectives in the present.”

They then list 101 up-to-date vision statements in all kinds of industry, and I recommend reading the article.

Creating your Vision Statement

Over my years in business and sitting on non-profit boards, I have been involved in quite a number of sessions where consultants have taken us through a process to develop a vision statement for the organization.

So, if you have tried this and ended up totally confused, I feel your pain!

Here are my thoughts for a small business.

1. Your vision statement needs to be clear, concise, simple, motivating and memorable.
2. It should be no longer than one or two sentences.
3. It paints a picture of your desired outcome and your target market

For example, our vision is that the Self Employed Business Academy is the premier community for self employed small business owners.

How did we come up with that?

Well, we reflected on the Hedgehog Concept introduced by Jim Collins in his book ‘Good to Great’. The Hedgehog Concept is based on 3 questions:

1. What are you deeply passionate about? For us, the answer is ‘self-employed small business owners.’
2. What can you be best in the world at? We believe that we can be the best at helping small business owners be successful by providing them with relevant, practical training courses, tools and templates and a place where they can communicate with each other along with experts to help them.
3. What drives your economic engine? For us, it is the number of members we are able to serve.

These answers were them summarized into the vision statement above, with an expanded version you can read on our About Us page.

Here your action plan for this week is to answer these questions:

• What are you deeply passionate about? This reflects back to your ‘big why’.
• What can you be best at in your world? Your world may be your local area, your state, your country, or the whole world?
• What drives your ‘economic engine’? In other words, how do you make money?

We’ll see you next week for the final instalment in this series when we will focus on your Core Business Values.