In this episode, I’m going to walk you through creating a vision for your business to support sustainable growth. When I first started my business, I thought vision was fluff for the longest time. I didn’t think I needed to know what that looks like. However, as I grew, I started to struggle personally with decision-making in my business because I had no idea where they were leading.

And so then I figured, okay, vision is actually something important, but how is it tangible? How do I actually break that down into something that I can do something with it? So this is what I’m sharing with you today!

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What Is A Vision Plan And Why It’s Important

A vision plan is a general direction you want your business to head in. Creating a vision is crucial for decision-making in your biz.

To start, one of the most important things to remember is that every decision must filter through your vision.

As business owners, we get caught up in saying yes to everyone because we want to “grow”. But, are we growing in the right direction or just saying yes for monetary needs? So when you have a decision to make, big or small, pull the notes from this episode out and go through the process to get your answer.

Getting really clear on your vision will help you prevent burnout and will support sustainable business growth.

How To Map Out Your Vision: The 3 Year Vision

To start creating a vision, start with a loose 3-year vision for your biz. Your vision can and will change as you grow in your business and your personal life. However, having a rough idea of where you want to be long-term will help you make decisions now that lead you towards that.

For example, when I first started my business, I wanted to have the freedom to travel. However, as I grew, my personal priorities started to shift. I wanted to start a family and be able to step back from my business to spend time with our baby.

Questions To Ask Yourself To Start:

1. What are your core values? (3-5 values that define your biz + team)

Ex. — team-focused, innovative, collaborative, integrity

2. What is your core focus/purpose? (what is it that your company is great at and why are you doing what you do?)

Ex. — your company is great at bringing entrepreneurs together in order to create connections among business owners

To further map out your 3-year vision for your biz, divide your business into the following categories. From there, you can ask yourself questions for each category to get an idea of your biz vision:

Headquarters
1. Do you want a team or do you want to run a solopreneur business?
2. What does your “office” environment look like? Do you work from home or do you have an office outside of your home?
Clients + Products/Services
1. What results do your products and services create?
2. What is your process for working with your clients?
Exposure + Selling
1. How do you acquire new clients?
2. What does the LTV (Lifetime Value) of your clients look like?
Results + Influence
1. What are you, as the CEO, free to do with your time and role?
2. What type of impact are you making on the people that interact with your company?

Using these questions as a guide, you will be able to create a clearer vision for your business that also supports your personal life.

How To Use Your Vision To Map Out Short-Term Projects + Quarterly Focuses

Having a vision is vital in order to map out your projects. In a fast-growing business, detailed planning for long-term timelines is a wild guess. That is to say, we can obviously plan out what we’d like the year to look for in terms of potential big projects, launches, etc but the execution plans need to stick to 45-90 days sprints.

We personally work on 90 days sprints because it’s easier to plan on a quarterly basis but we also have roadmap check-ins at the beginning of each month to get a pulse on where our projects are at.

For example, if your long-term vision is to be able to build a family and be able to step back from the business when needed to spend time with your family, what steps can you take now that will push you towards that vision?

This could be things like:

Upleveling your current services to increase revenue
Hiring more team members so you can delegate
Dedicating a quarter to building out a team training program so you can onboard smoothly
Building your SOP manual
Building out a detailed process for client onboarding and client management so you can delegate parts of the process to team members

These are all projects that you can work on now that will push you towards your vision!

Overall, creating a vision plan is a necessary piece for building and running a business. Having a vision plan allows you to make decisions that move your business forward and prevent burnout and overwhelm. If you are looking for support with building out your vision, hop into our free Mighty Networks Community or send us a DM on Instagram!