Keeping a clear & focused Business VISION - Eye’s on the Prize!
Before anyone starts up their own business they have this vision of what it looks like and how they look within it. It's where they would like to see themselves and their business in the future. Your business vision statement captures your long term goals and aspirations for your business.
This vision can often get forgotten and we can unconsciously shift away from it unless we ensure we are continuously re-visiting it. Having your business vision statement put up somewhere you will see on a daily basis, teamed with tools like creating vision boards can help you stay focused and on track to achieving what you started out to do.
Eyes on the goal
Now you have your Vision, how the hell do you get there? Well this comes from a carefully strategic plan with clear, structured and achievable goals. If you just set out to achieve your end result in any activity you will often find yourself overwhelmed, and struggle to get there. Breaking this up into smaller manageable steps will mean you are more likely to succeed and enjoy the process getting there. I know this sounds all very obvious, but you would be amazed how, even though we all know this, just how many businesses struggle when it comes to managing growth, due to the lack of SMART planning.
There are a number of great easy to use planning software resources out there, like Todolist, Trello, Asana etc, but good old pen and paper on a wall planner can work too. The key here is to use what works for YOU!
Managing the work-life balance
The sweet spot in business is when you achieve that healthy work-life balance. When you are working the amount of hours per day that allows you the freedom to live the lifestyle you want, while maintaining a successfully growing business. The freedom to not be tied down to the overworked rat race that you gladly left behind when you decided to be self employed. When you are working ON your business and not perpetually IN your businesses…..after all, are these not the very reasons you took the leap?
While an ideal work-life balance can look very different from one business owner to another, in order to ensure your own wellbeing is not put on the back burner while you grow your business, you need to have in place and maintain the 2 things above; Clear vision and planning.
As entrepreneurs we can often put our own wellbeing second and sometimes even lower on the list of priorities in favour of chasing success. The issue here is, this way of thinking and working is just not sustainable. Although we are wonderfully resilient creatures, we are still only human and EVERYONE has a burn out point. It is on the journey to that burn out point that business owners can lose vision of why they started their business and quickly fall out of love with it.
Having a clear vision of what your ideal working week looks like and putting together a plan that will enable you to work towards this, is the only way to ensure you will actually achieve it…..that is unless you win the lottery of course….but let's be realistic here! :-)
So to Sum up......
you can use these following steps which will lay the foundations to help support you overcome business growing pains…
Keeping a clear and focused business vision
Setting out your larger business goals into smaller SMART goals and tasks
Ensure you put your own well being and time away from the business as a priority
You can achieve the last point by planning AROUND THE CLOCK. Plan your time away from your business within your weekly planner. If you need a weekly planner that will help you do this why not download my FREE weekly planner template
If you would like to learn more about how I can support business to plan for a productive future with this please drop me a line for a complimentary consultation.