When I first started working as a business consultant, I had a very dear friend with a BIG dream. Even before I was truly consulting professionally, I had been coaxing her towards her dream, so she naturally became my first client when she was ready to learn more about how to grow her business. When we started to look at the results she wanted to produce, they were small compared to her dream. It was time to reexamine her vision statement. She knew the value of what she taught, which was what she offered as business, and that it could dramatically improve the quality of life for children and their families.
Initially, she was thinking she would be able to reach a handful of families in a small market. She had done a couple of health fairs with limited success. She felt she could only work with a group no larger than 6 and saw herself as limited to doing mostly private consults. In talking about how to grow her business, being limited to groups of 6 and private consults created a ceiling. We clearly needed to talk more about the results she wanted to produce, her big dream – her vision. It wasn’t that she “could” only teach to 6 people at a time, but she “thought” it was all she would be able to do (and so she set a self-imposed limit on what she “wanted”).
This is why having a vision statement is so important for all businesses, even for individual service providers. If you want to know a key element in how to grow a business, it’s having a big dream and a vision statement that reflects that. A vision statement should define your aspirations and dreams for the future you want to create with your business. It may sound a little corny, but the vision statement is your dream of making the world a better place because your business was in it. For my friend, she knew she really did want to change the world – the whole world – because she was making a real difference for kids and families that needed help, and working with only 6 at a time wasn’t going to make a big enough impact, it simply would not reach enough of those in need. That was her dream and now she’s living it.
Today, she has a global outreach supported by traveling two weeks out of every month.
Here is her testimonial:
I smile every single time I think of the beginning of my business. You asked the most poignant questions. I said that I only wanted to teach six people at a time. Yikes! That would have made a nice hobby. Now, I have visited countries all over the globe with my workshops. My books and manuals have been translated into Malay, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Italian, French, Spanish, Russian, Slovene, German, and awaiting further translations. I am pleased beyond words.
My business has all been based on your coaching in the infancy of my exploration of how to sell workshops and make money doing what I love. I am forever grateful.
What impact do you want to have on the world? It doesn’t have to be global, like hers – even something within your community can be your vision statement. Share your vision for the future thanks to your business in a comment below.
