S2Ep81: Why Having a Company Vision is Crucial for Entrepreneurs

In today’s episode, Allan shares his thoughts and ideas about why your vision, and who you listen to, will either support or distract you from the goals you are trying to achieve. Establishing your vision is the first of several steps toward making your business venture a success. It’s important to focus on both short-term and long-term goals to have a clear vision for the direction you want to go as an entrepreneur.

Podcast Transcript:

Hey, everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Allan. I’m a family man and attorney and an entrepreneur. Each week, we provide resources and advice to help build your business. Are you ready? Then let’s go. Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Business Growth Pod today, glad to have a few minutes to share with you. I’m going to record a solo episode today. I’ve done that a little bit in the past. And I’m thinking about doing them more regularly, as I have thoughts and ideas come up that I think will really help you get your business started and take it to the next level. That’s my focus. I’m focused on you entrepreneurs out there that are working really hard to step one, just get your business started, right, getting that emotional energy, getting that confidence that you need to take the leap, whether that’s starting while you are going to school or you have another job, or you know, just starting a business, and going into it full time. It requires confidence you’re putting yourself out there. And that’s difficult, I think because we used to live in caves or whatever we’re so focused on what our tribe our quote unquote, tribe thinks of what we’re doing what we say and what we do for work. And we care so much about society, and what those especially those closest to us think, although with, you know, social media and the way technology is headed. Man, we care a lot about what strangers say about us to people we’ve never met in our lives. And I get it. But I don’t, you know, my rule of thumb is this. If I am not going to ask a particular person for advice about something about a category of my life, about my spiritual life, my family life, my financial life, my profession, my education, my physical life, my social life, if I’m not going to go to somebody, and ask them, Hey, these are my options. What do you think if I’m not going to hold them in esteem enough to ask their opinion about something, then when they offer their opinion to me without me requesting it, they tell me what they think. I’m not going to care. That’s my rule of thumb. If I would not go to you for advice, I am not going to care what you have to say to me in terms of criticism. Doesn’t that make sense?

Today, we’re talking a little bit about vision, and this idea that, who we listen to, and what noise we hear, when we’re alone with our thoughts. Those things are instrumental in helping us with our vision. Because of vision, a lot of people use words like goals, or objectives, or landmarks or whatever, for things that they want to achieve. But the thing about a vision, when you have a concrete vision is that those voices that are distracting you from that vision that aren’t supporting you and helping you achieve that vision, they start to fade away and they start to become less significant. So number one, let’s listen to those voices that are helping to motivate us that are not bringing us down. And let’s listen to those voices that are coming from the people that we would seek advice from when we are talking about our vision and what we want to accomplish. So step one, let’s clarify who we’re listening to, because there’s a lot of noise out there. There’s a lot of noise recently, the just kind of, in terms of point of reference from when I’m recording this, the Supreme Court case that struck down Roe v. Wade was decided. And this isn’t going to be political. I’m not going to get into the political aspects of that. But there’s a lot of noise surrounding that right now. And you have to decide what the extent of your involvement in that noise is going to be. And the way that I make decisions, at least when I’m clear headed, and I’ve got my ducks in a row, and I’m thinking clearly, is, I try to make decisions based on whether they move me closer to my vision, and my goals and what I’m trying to accomplish. I have goals and vision set up for seven areas of my life, I touched on them earlier. Number one is spiritual. Number two is family. Number three is kind of mental, making sure I stay sharp. Number four is professional what I do for a career. Number five is physical, like taking care of my body, feeding it correctly, and working out. Number six is financial, whether I’m training and achieving my financial goals. And number seven is my social life, my social interactions, whether I’m giving and receiving value from those social interactions. So those are the seven areas that I focus on, and that I set goals and visions for, and we’re going to talk about visions today for just a few minutes. So, I got this idea of talking about vision. And I started thinking about that infamous quote from the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. And so I googled quotes from the Cheshire Cat, because I actually don’t remember the Cheshire Cat talking a lot. But I wanted to get the quote correctly. But I found one that I thought was even more applicable to visions, and it’s shorter. And I guess at some point, and maybe this isn’t in the movie, maybe this is just in the book. But the Cheshire Cat says something like if you don’t know where you are going, any road can take you there. And I think that’s such a profound idea. And most of us, we care where we’re headed, right? We care where we’re going to end up. And we care about all these different areas of our life, and what we’re trying to achieve, and we want to have time to spend with our families, and we want to progress and grow in different areas of our life. And so we should really, really care about what road we’re on. But if we don’t have this concept of where we want to go, then the road doesn’t matter.

But the problem is the road really should, because there are some roads, a lot of roads that I definitely don’t want to be on. And that’s the thing is that if we don’t choose a vision, or a goal, or something to go after one will be chosen for us, by default. But if we’re deliberate about it, we’re going to talk about some ideas that might help you with your vision. But there are benefits to having a vision, I’m going to talk about a couple just off the top of my head. Number one, you’re going to stress a lot less about things, if they don’t make a difference in achieving your goal or your vision. If we have a 10 year vision for where we want to be, let’s say physically, you know, in my mind, I have this idea of where physically I want to be in 10 years. And something happens where, you know, I, you know, eat too much in a particular meal or I sustained an injury. My immediate question before I decide to let this really affect my day, my immediate question should be, is this going to affect where I’m going to be in 10 years? And in most cases, the answer is going to be no. In a few cases, the answer might be yes. But in most cases, it’s not going to affect where I’m going to be in 10 years. What’s going on right now is I feel like everything is short sighted. I feel like everything is where am I going to be tomorrow? Not where am I going to be in 10 years? What am I going to accomplish in the next month? I’ve said this before, but Tony Robbins is known for saying that people individuals underestimate the amount of things they can accomplish in five years and overestimate the things that they can accomplish in one. So if that’s the case, why don’t we spend more time focusing on five and 10 years down the road? So number To in addition to allowing, kind of creating this stress mechanism, where we go through this process of thinking, hey, is this going to affect me in 10 years? And if not, I’m going to let it go. If it’s not going to affect me in 10 years, I’m not going to worry about it, I’m not going to allow myself to worry about it. So having that vision number one creates a stress reduction mechanism. It’s a coping mechanism, right? Where we’re like, okay, let’s put things into context, is this going to affect me in 10 years, and then let it go? Number two, having a vision allows us to create a great system for making decisions. Great system. A lot of times, we come to an impasse where we are trying to figure out which of two roads to take, much like Alice in Alice in Wonderland. And this is the question that you need to ask when you have a vision solidified. Here’s the beauty of it when you’re making decisions. And you’re at a point where you’re like, you’re trying to decide between two equally good things. And two, good decisions are always that’s always the most difficult decision, if you’re making a choice between two bad things are in a good a bad thing. Obviously, those aren’t as hard of a decision as to good things. But if you ask yourself, when you have two possibilities, two opportunities, you ask yourself, hey, is this going to affect me in this category in 10 years? Here’s the cool thing. It’s a win-win scenario. Because if you answer that question, yes, it is going to affect me, then you should know which of the decisions you should make, because you’re focusing on that decision with that 10 year perspective. And if you know that it’s going to affect you, in 10 years, the answer, or the opportunity that you should take should become clear to you, because you understand how that’s going to impact you in 10 years. But if it is not going to affect you, in 10 years, if you’re at a 5050, and you don’t know how something is going to affect you in 10 years, or if it is, then it doesn’t matter what you decide. That’s the cool thing. So there’s all these tangential benefits to having a long term vision, and focusing on that vision and having it real and palpable in your mind. So let’s talk just for a couple of minutes. As we’re wrapping up here, let’s talk about how to create a vision.

As we’re talking about how to create a vision, I think the most important aspect of creating a vision is to note that visions evolve. So you set long term goals, 510 plus years, and you have those in the back of your mind. But as time goes on, those goals evolve as things change. And you don’t just, they don’t just get wiped out, they don’t just get completely erased, they evolve. So you tweak your goals as things change, and things happen. And you, you decide to make a conscious effort to determine what’s important to you. So with that in mind, the number one aspect of creating visions is that they’re going to evolve, it really lowers the amount of pressure on you to just get started. To just go through, I would recommend using those seven categories that I mentioned before spiritual, family, mental, physical, professional, financial, and social. And keep in mind that they’re going to evolve so that there’s not much pressure on you just get started, throw something out there and work through this process of imagining yourself and 10 years down the road, start with 10 years, exactly 10 years. And as you go through that process, imagine, hey, where do I want to be financially? What do I want my net worth to be? How much do I want to be making annually? And get pretty granular with it? And then go through the visualization process of imagining how you feel after achieving those goals? What does it feel like? Who are you talking to? Who are the people around you? What are you able to do with your time if you’re financially free, and imagine yourself doing those things? Now that you have the freedom because you’re not financially bound or whatever your goals are, but go through that process. And it’s going to be that gut feeling as you visualize achieving and obtaining those goals. It’s going to be that process that is going to let you know whether you’re on the right track. If you are married or have a partner or you have relationships with business partners, you’re going to want to include them in this process also because these ideas in this vision, number one, it affects them and number two, you want them to be on board with these visions and these goals so that you’re on the same road. And I’ve seen scenarios where business partners don’t share visions. And that’s really problematic. It’s not something that can’t be overcome, but it’s very problematic, you will at least want a business partner or a life partner or spouse to be in a position where they will talk to you about your visions and be involved in that process. As you talk to those around you, only the ones that it directly affects, what you don’t want to do is solicit general advice from a parent or from family generally or from friend, because what’s going to happen is they are going to be very biased in the information that they give you. You know, I’ve had people that used to encourage me to not start a business. And they did that because in their experiences, businesses always failed, or they had a friend that had a failed business or whatever. So be really careful who you share your goals and visions with regardless of what they are, if it doesn’t directly impact somebody, meaning a spouse or business partner. The only thing that somebody around you should say this is a great litmus test, the only thing that somebody around you should say about your goal or vision is, congratulations, I’m excited for you, what can I do to help? If it is anything beyond that, beyond encouragement, then it is likely that they’re biased, and that you achieving that goal or vision affects them in some way, whether it’s just makes them feel bad, because they’re not the ones achieving it. They’re jealous, whatever. So be very careful who you share your visions with getting back to kind of setting these visions, break them down into categories. And don’t make them too crazy, maybe one two, Max three per category of things that you want to achieve. And the funny thing is, the things that really matter are the most difficult to measure, right? financial prosperity that’s really easy to measure, you can literally create a net worth spreadsheet, right, which there’s nothing wrong with that I do that I review mine once a year to make sure I’m on track. And if you want to see my worksheet, I won’t share the specifics of it. But I’ll share how I work out my assets and liabilities and compute it and it’s pretty cool Excel worksheet. So hit me up if you want to see that. But kind of going back to this idea that the most important things, your spiritual life, your relationship with God, your family life, your relationship with your spouse, children, parents, whatever. Those things are really tough to measure, like, how do I know if I’m prospering? So what I would recommend is you go through this process of identifying what are the things in the relationships that you want to have in 10 years, you know, things as simple as I want to be able to have a relationship with my parents, where I’m able to help them with things, or discuss things with them, and feel safe and secure and loved and all these things in 10 years, right? There’s a lot of people that don’t have those relationships, they don’t talk to their parents, they don’t talk to siblings, whatever. And so even just starting there, and then working on that visualization of hey, how am I going to get there? And what do I feel what you know, I’m imagining in 10 years, I close my eyes and imagine what’s my communication? Like, with my mom? How am I talking to her? You know, what is she saying to me, that’s gonna give you a really good idea on those tougher categories. You know, family, social, spiritual, those tougher ones that are actually the most important, it’s gonna give you an idea how to measure and create visions. So I’m happy to help if you have any questions about creating visions or goals. But I think the big takeaways are one, be careful who you listen to, and who you share your visions and goals with to break them down into categories. And don’t do more than one, two or three per category. Don’t get overwhelmed. You know, make sure to visit them regularly. I look at mine, five, six times a week, make sure to add this visualization technique. That’s why I call them visions versus goals. It’s not me necessarily having this you know, messenger from heaven, right? It’s not the vision in that way. It’s a vision in that eye, visualize them and keep an open mind about evolving. At the end of the day, you have to remember that if you don’t know where you’re headed, it doesn’t matter what road you’re on. And if you’re on a road that you don’t want to be on. The only way for you to get off of it or to get onto a road that you do want to be on is to make sure that you clarify and focus on your visions and goals. I really hope this helped you. I hope this gave you a few things to help. Few things to think about as you’re developing your businesses, and you’re working on your personal lives as well. Your businesses will only go as far as you have developed personally, that is always going to be a direct limitation on your business is how much has the individual business owner or entrepreneur been able to develop personally, that is going to be your ceilings, that is going to be your business ceiling as well. Make sure to check out my website, there’s a place where you can schedule a one on one with me, Allan draper.com. There’s a scheduling link. If you have any questions or if there’s anything that I can help you with, if there is anything that I’ve shared today that is helpful to you, that you think somebody might get some benefit out of. That’s a great way to show them that you love them, share this episode with them and tell them hey, there’s, you know, at this minute, Mark, there’s a comment that I think you would really benefit from. That’s a great way to share the love and it’s a great way to give back to this podcast. And please let me know how I’m doing and also if there are any other topics that you’d like me to consider, and we will catch you next time.

If you have enjoyed today’s podcast, please leave us a rating and for daily inspiration and business tips. Follow Allan on Instagram. Until next time, remember we build the future one entrepreneur at a time.

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