The First Step to Building a Successful Small Business

I didn't know how to do it when I set the goal, but I knew the questions to ask. And one of the questions I had to ask is who do I need to become in order to achieve the goal that I don't know how to achieve? Do you hear that? Who do I need to become? So, business success, what do you think the first thing you need to do to have a successful business over the next year, three years, five years, is what do you think is the first thing you need to do? A lot of people think they need to get incorporated. A lot of people think that they need to have, you know, strategies and tactics. What do you think the first thing is that you really need to do if you want to have a successful business in the future? A vision, right? Do you have a clear, written out vision of what your business looks like when it's up operating like a Swiss watch? Right. Do you have a vision? Every single business that I have started, before I even start the business, guess what I do? I create a clear vision. So if I gave it to you, you'd be able to read it to know exactly what it is that I want to achieve. Is your vision written out not just for your business, but for each department in your business? Right. Why do we want to have a vision? Well, there are a couple parts of the brain that when we take the time to create a clear vision of what it looks like upon completion. I want you to think about this for just a moment. Imagine if you were an architect and imagine if somebody who was going to hire you, all right, Somebody who was going to hire you, wasn't able to give you a clear vision of what it looks like upon completion, whether it's a house, whether it's a shopping center, whether it's a skyscraper. Don't you have to start off with what it looks like upon completion? Well, everybody says yes to that answer or that question, but very few people actually create the vision first. A lot of people have this general idea of what they want their business to look like, but the clarity of what it looks like upon completion isn't done. And so what happens? They don't have the ability to create the plans to achieve the vision. So when I create a vision, I start off with this sentence that says, I'm so happy and grateful for the fact that. And then I write down my business is helping this amount of people. We are doing blank, blank, blank. I am earning X amount of. And I write down the top line income that the net profits. I write down how we are Helping people. And then I continue by saying my marketing department, and I write out a vision for the marketing department. I also write out a vision for the sales department, the management, the technology, the product development, the customer service department. And I start off with a vision of what does it look like upon it, operating from a like a clockwork like scenario. And I don't have to know how to achieve that at the beginning, early stages. All I have to have is the vision, okay, for what that looks like. Does that make sense? And if you were to look at my exceptional life blueprint. Hold on. I'm going to actually show it to you. I'm going to keep talking and I'm going to show it to you. I write out all of the story and the results in advance, okay. And the milestones that we have achieved in advance. And so when we create the vision, then we can ask ourselves, what do we need to do in order to achieve the vision? And tomorrow, in tomorrow's session, I'm going to be talking about a goal. So we first start the vision sometime in the future. Whether it's a year from now, whether it's three years from now, five years from now, it doesn't matter. And then we start to build goals towards that vision. Does that make sense? Right. Because when we do that now, we are architecting not only the vision, but we're architecting what does it look like upon completion. Then we ask ourselves, of course, you know, what knowledge do I need, what skills do I need, what tools do I need? What resources do I need in order to achieve that vision? Does that make sense? Right. So what is your vision? Right. Your vision isn't what you do, Right? Your vision is what your business looks like and what your life is like and the people that you're helping as a result of your programs, your products, or your services. Right? So when we're creating a vision and we're using our Einstein brain, right, the left prefrontal cortex, what we're doing is we're actually activating not only our imagination center, but we're also, when we see ourselves living that vision, do you think that we might be activating the reward center in our own brain, the anticipatory, okay, center in our brain that would release dopamine, would release, you know, the oxytocin when we share it with others and we actually help people? Absolutely. So it's Dorin lead to provide a livable wage for each person on the planet. That's a big vision. Right? And then the more details we have and Like I mentioned earlier, for those of you just joined on Instagram, I'm streaming on five different platforms right now, or channels right now. Think of yourself as you're an architect, and you're not only the architect, but you're also the client. Right? You're also the client. And what does that mean? It means that the client needs to tell the architect exactly what the architect needs to design and draw. Right? So the architect of. Okay, creates the schematic, but the client says, I want a skyscraper. I want it this tall, this many windows, this many floors. This type of finishing. And a vision is different than goals. Goals are the process by which we achieve a vision. Right? Right. Goals are the process, how we achieve the vision. Every construction job has got goals that they want to achieve. I was just in Dubai three weeks ago, and if you ever want to see vision that's beyond comprehension for most people, you know, they're building islands, okay, in the ocean. Yeah, they're building islands in the ocean and then building buildings and houses on top of that. Right? So your job and my job is to create a clear and precise vision so that we can design the goals and the strategies to achieve that vision. Does that make sense? Does that make sense? And here's something that, you know, that's really, really critical. And I talked about this a little bit before. Most people don't create a vision, a big, hairy, audacious vision, because they lack the knowledge and skills currently to achieve that vision. So they allow their current circumstances to control their thinking. Instead of saying, here's the vision that I want, Here are the goals that I need to achieve, and here are the skills and the knowledge and the people and the tools and resources that I need to achieve the vision. So one type of entrepreneur looks at what is and makes decisions from what is. And another type of entrepreneurs looks at the future of what they want to do. And then they say, here's who I need to become. Which type of entrepreneur are you? Are you the type of entrepreneur that says, here are my, you know, here's my current knowledge base, here's my current money, here's my current resources, here's my current history. And I'm going to create my vision based on what I think, based on the past, or I'm going to create my vision based on me growing and becoming the entrepreneur that I want to become, that I can become. Which one are you? Are you looking at your current circumstances and you're allowing that to hold you hostage, or are you dreaming big? Einstein? One of his greatest Gifts is he used that imagination and then he figured out all of the formulas afterwards. He had an imagination that was really, really pretty phenomenal. Right? And so create the vision and then upgrade your knowledge, skills, tools and resources in order to achieve your goals and dreams. When I started REMAX of Indiana back in 1987, I was 26 years young. I didn't have the knowledge, I didn't have the skills, I didn't have the tools, didn't have the resource, didn't have the money. But I made the goals first. After I created the vision of having a company that does a billion dollars a year, I set a one billion dollar goal back in 1992. I set a 100 million dollar goal back in $100 million a year in sales goal in 1987. Andrea is the article that came out for me. Over here I'm going to show you something that Andrea, my executive assistant is going to bring over just so you can, you can see something from the past. Right? I'll show you something that appeared. And let me know if you can see this. Can you, can you see this? There's a picture of me over here. This is from 1993. Sets 1 billion goal for 1993. It says, John Astrath focus on success and gets it by age 30. In 1987, I set a goal to hit $100 million a year in sales. And then I set a goal of hitting a billion dollars in sales by 19 in 1993. And by 1995 we had achieved. Actually by 1997 we'd achieved 4.5 billion a year in sales. I didn't know how to do it when I set the goal, but I knew the questions to ask. And one of the questions I had to ask is who do I need to become in order to achieve the goal that I don't know how to achieve? Do you hear that? Who do I need to become? Meaning what is my identity that I needed to develop? What is the knowledge I needed to acquire? What are the skills that I needed to acquire? What are the tools? What are the resources that I needed to acquire? I didn't know how to achieve a big vision of 100 million initially, then a billion, you know, then four and a half. I had no idea. But I did know how to set goals which we're going to be talking about tomorrow. All right, so today we've been talking about creating your vision and why it's critical. And when we're creating our vision, we're going to use that left prefrontal Cortex, the Einstein part of the brain that I always talk about. You'll see it right up there on my wall, right? We want to manage the Frankenstein part of the brain. That's the part of our brain that says, I can't do it. I'm not smart enough, I'm not good enough. I don't have the knowledge, I don't have the skills, I don't have the tools, I don't have the resources. I, I failed in the past. So we want to activate Einstein back up there and we want to deactivate Frankenstein over there. And when we do that, we can then upgrade our knowledge, skills, tools and resources. So here's the question you should ask yourself. If you could take me out to lunch and pick my brain for an hour or an hour and a half on business growth, would you spend $47 to take me out to lunch? Would you spend 150 bucks to take me out for dinner? Right. I will be showing you everything you need in order to really grow your business. And let me ask you a question. Isn't business a road, a possible road to financial freedom? Right. Isn't business one of the royal roads to financial freedom? If you do it right, it's a nightmare. If you do it wrong. 85% of businesses fail not because they don't have a good product or service. It's because they have a terrible process. Right? It's a terrible process, not a terrible product or service that you have. So thanks for joining me today. Have an awesome, awesome day. I hope many of you have seen some of the, the videos and pictures that my wife and I have been putting up on our social media channels. We just got back from a wonderful three week vacation and I look forward to being back. Have an awesome day today or an awesome evening depending on where you are in the world. And we'll see many of you back here tomorrow. Same time, 9 o' clock Pacific, 12 o' clock New York. All right, thank you for sharing, everyone. Appreciate you. Hey, this is John and if you like that video, watch the next video because it is packed with things that you can do right now to achieve success way faster than ever before.