Strategic Coach Resources

The importance of a vision.

At the beginning of your entrepreneurial career, you likely had a “big picture” idea of why you were going into business for yourself. A vision like this helps people motivate themselves to do the work needed to reach a level of success.

Entrepreneurs face a challenge, though, when they reach that level of success. Often they neglect to create a new, bigger vision, or get caught up in the day-to-day operation of their business and lose the vision of what they were originally trying to achieve. People become frustrated when they lose their vision, and, operating without one, usually reach a point where their progress stops. Some people manage to push through this because they’re gifted in a particular area and can achieve performance without vision. But, after working this way for a while, their excitement and sense of purpose dissolves, and often the business will drop off the radar, never to come back. The alternative is performance with vision — an alternative that offers you a lifelong career full of satisfaction and results.

Your vision of tomorrow provides you with deadlines, goals, and game plans to use today.

Focus on a vision.

“Focus on a vision” means having your mind on a particular vision and interpreting your life on a daily basis in relationship to that vision. When you do this, you are literally coached by your future: Your vision of tomorrow provides you with deadlines, goals, and game plans to use today.

A time frame that works well for most people is three years. It’s just the year after the year after next — close enough to seem real, yet far enough away that you can imagine a lot of your current issues being dealt with by then. You can create a vision of a three-year “quantum leap” and check in with it every 90 days, stopping to track your progress and refocus yourself on that vision on a regular basis.

Multiply your progress.

There’s a different kind of math that comes into play when you have a vision. In a regular three-year period, without any special planning, you could expect to be doing more or less what you’re doing now, perhaps with a bit of “addition” along the way. Operating with three-year vision — using the clarity, excitement, and momentum it gives you, and gearing your actions toward a bigger mental image of the future — you can multiply your progress.

A vision bigger than you.

A vision will help you see what you’re trying to achieve, what kind of value you’re trying to create for yourself, for the marketplace, and for other communities in your life. By the very nature of the fact that as an entrepreneur you create your own opportunity, there’s no upper limit to the value you can create as you continue to expand your vision.

Your vision of success may evolve as you go along. When you first started out, you might have been looking for money and success to provide you with a sense of progress through your income, your savings, the quality of clients and support staff you work with, the centers of influence you can reach, and the kind of lifestyle you enjoy. Beyond a certain level of success, though, we’ve noticed that more and more entrepreneurs become interested in the welfare of other people. Their vision takes on a different quality and becomes bigger than themselves. Take, for example, Brian U’ren, featured as an Industry Transformer in the August 2003 issue of Strategic eNews. His vision has simplified his business life to the point where he now works 130 fewer days in a year, and he’s used this time to create an organization that delivers medical supplies to Belarus, a country devastated by the effects of the Chernobyl disaster. So far, he’s delivered over $90 million worth of supplies. No doubt he feels an enormous sense of satisfaction and joy about the difference he’s made in the lives of the children and adults in that country.

This is what vision makes possible!