In this episode of the business coaching podcast, the host walks listeners through the second half of a strategic roadmap for growing a company. After defining Point A (the current state) in a prior episode, he introduces Point B – the future vision – and presents a concrete “3‑1‑90” blueprint that consists of a three‑year vision, one‑year objectives, and 90‑day priorities. He explains why a vivid, three‑year vision is essential for recruiting and retaining talent, citing Cameron Herold’s Vivid Vision and Michael Hyatt’s Vision‑Driven Leader, and adds Dan Sullivan’s “The Dan Sullivan Question” as a practical tool for visualizing the future. The host critiques the common “Groundhog Day” pattern of setting identical yearly goals and argues that quarterly priorities break that cycle while still aligning with longer‑term aspirations. He shares a role‑play example of using the Dan Sullivan Question to imagine a future dinner in Chicago, illustrating how to phrase the vision as if it has already happened. The episode concludes by summarizing the three components of the business blueprint, previewing the next episode on detailed planning, and promoting a live web class on blueprintos.com along with sponsor messages for Club Capital and Above the Business.
And what I believe that this does is it gives you a structure that is both short enough that, hey, we can't really mess around at 90 days, but at the same time gets us out of the Groundhog Day of just one-year thinking and allows us to expand into where are we going over the next 3 years.
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Hey everyone. All right. So last week we talked about what is the first part of what I consider to be a roadmap for your business, and that is where are you today? We call that point A. In this episode, we're going to talk about the second part of a roadmap, which is point B, where are you going? Now, I've talked about this on the podcast before, but I think it's important to be able to revisit it for me myself to be chief reminding officer. And then that passes it on to you all to be reminding your team about where you are today and especially about the vision for the future. Now, if you've read books like Vision Driven Leader by Michael Hyatt, fantastic book. If you read Vivid Vision by Cameron Herold, another fantastic book. Or if you've just read any business book in general, they're going to talk about the importance of having a compelling future for where your business is going. It helps you to recruit A-players. It helps you to retain some of your best talent because they know that you're going to be continue to grow, that they have a future there that they see. Future opportunities for them to be able to grow, etc. And what I want to share with you today is a structure that we fully believe in for myself, but more importantly for the clients that I've worked with. And this is what we consider to be your business blueprint. Where are you going is 3 things. It is first, your 3-year vision. It is second, your 1-year objectives. And it is third, your 90-day priorities. Kind of a short way to say that is your 3-1-90. Those 3 things make up your business blueprint. In next week's episode, we're going to talk about the importance of having a detailed plan. So in the first part last week, we talked about point A, where is the business today? Do you know your numbers? Well, what numbers do I need to know? And we talked about the handful of numbers, maybe a little bit more than a handful of numbers. It's important for you to have a really good grasp of where the business is today. Secondly, where are we going? And where we're going, this sometimes can be referred to as a goal-setting framework. I think many of you listening to this, and certainly was my case, I was pretty good about setting at the time, I would say, this is our one-year goals. And for years, probably 5 to 7 years, maybe longer, it felt like that it was the same year repeated over and over. You get to the end of the year, you come back sometime in December, you're starting to set goals again. And it seems like I'm almost repeating the same goals as I did last year, and then I would do it again. And it felt like business Groundhog Day in a lot of ways. And what I believe that this does is it gives you a structure that is both short enough that, hey, we can't really mess around at 90 days, but at the same time gets us out of the Groundhog Day of just one-year thinking and allows us to expand into where are we going over the next 3 years. One of the biggest influences There are really 3. I've already mentioned 2 of them in this thinking. Number 1, Vivid Vision by Cameron Herald. Highly recommend that book. It really helps you to understand how to really craft a vivid vision. And he also advocates a 3-year timeframe for that. And secondly, Vision-Driven Leader by Michael Hyatt. But I want to add up one other one. There's a tiny book. If you've ever been familiar with Dan Sullivan and his work at Strategic Coach. There's a tiny book called The Dan Sullivan Question, and it goes like this. If we were having this conversation, let's lean out 3 years, and we were having this conversation 3 years from today. And I'll stop for just a second out of the role play and share with you that what I'll do is if I'm actually on the phone with someone or on Zoom, I'll ask where they are and maybe if I'm familiar with that city. I put myself in their shoes and I say, what if I flew to where you are? And we go have a great dinner. One of our awesome clients, Mark, who lives in Chicago, and so I love Chicago and we've laughed about Gibson's and going to a Chicago Cubs game. And I genuinely want to fly to go see Mark in a couple of years when his first 3-year vision is up. We could go have dinner at Gibson's on Rush Street. We'll go to a Cubs game, et cetera. And so, What that's doing is painting a vivid vision of like, yeah, I'd really love to do that. And at that dinner, he and I both love a really nice glass of red wine. At that dinner, we are reflecting on the past 3 years, and he's sharing with me how excited he is and how proud he is of the things that they've accomplished. And so now that I've put him in that place, whatever that may look like for you, Then I get him to articulate to me what does he see, what happened. This is important. He's sharing it in the affirmative. And what I mean by that is he's sharing it as it's already happened. Meaning the language here is important. Not this is what I want to happen. More so, this is what I see. This is what did happen. And that is, while subtle, incredibly powerful whenever you're putting together a 3-year vision. So, that's the first part. So, those 3 things, take the Vivid Vision book by Cameron Herald, Vision Driven Leader by Michael Hyatt, and then grab the Dan Sullivan question. So, those 3 things have really shaped me in this idea of a 3-year vision, how important it is to set that. Now, I'll give you some insight. I will tell you the clients I've worked with that have completed their first or second, most of them first year, 3-year 3-year vision and they're going into their second one, they're blown away about how small their thinking was at the time. And you just have to go through that. I've certainly experienced that myself. So really, if you've never really leaned out to set a 3-year vision, I cannot recommend it enough. So 3-year vision, your 1-year objectives. What are the 3 to 5 big objectives that we want to accomplish this year? And then finally, number 3, what is our 90-day priorities? What are the priorities we need to do this quarter that help us get closer to the things we're wanting to do and accomplish this year? And then how does that help us to get ultimately where we're trying to go over the next 3 years? That is your business blueprint that helps you to craft a point B. Next week we're going to pick this up. And now that we have these two coordinates, we have point A and we have point B. Well, now we need to devise a plan, an actionable plan that we can go and execute on so that we can remove what's standing in the way. That's foreshadowing a little bit here. What's standing in the way so that we can get from point A to point B. Your business roadmap is made up of 3 things. Where are you today? Point A. Where are you going? Point B. And then finally, what's your plan to make that happen? Your business blueprint, your point B, what we talked about today, your 3-year vision, your 1-year objectives, your 90-day targets. I hope this served you. If you would like to come and learn more strategies like this, I've got a web class coming up. If you could just go to blueprintos.com and you'll see right on the homepage, you can register for one of my live upcoming web class. Look forward to seeing you there. All right, everyone, lead well and go be great.
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