Create A Vision For Your Business Without Being Cliché (Step By Step Plan)

Are you working incredibly hard, showing up every day, putting in the long hours? But when somebody asks you, what's your company's vision? You have no idea where you're actually going. You have a vague sense of wanting to grow. You have a feeling that you want more freedom, you want more revenue, you want more impact, but you have no clear vision. And without a real vision, in my experience, every decision is harder. It becomes more of a guess. Every hire is a guess. Every product that you build starts feeling like a guess. And this is because you have no clear picture of what you are actually building towards. What is the North Star? What are you trying to accomplish? And that is a major problem when you're trying to build for the long term. But don't worry, it gets worse. There's another problem. A lot of the content out there when it comes to business and vision is so abstract, it's really useless. They tell you to think bigger and to dream bigger and to reach for the stars. All of that is super generic and could apply to any business in any industry. That is not a vision. That is a motivational Instagram post. Okay? Today I'm going to give you a 5-step process to build a real, specific, actionable vision for your business. One that guides your actual decisions in your business so you know exactly if you're making decisions that align with your vision, one that's going to motivate you and your team through some hard seasons that you're going to have. It's just inevitable. You're going to have a vision that is complete, that is specific to your business, that you can go after and your whole team can rally around. So let's get into it. Step 1: Start with the life you are actually building towards. A lot of times we start businesses just wanting to be successful and we don't really understand what we're building towards and what this business is actually going to get us. What is all the sacrifice and all this money and time and effort going to get us in our actual life? You know, a lot of business vision exercises start with the actual business, which makes a lot of sense. You know, they ask questions like how big you want your company to be, how much revenue you want to make, how many employees you want to have in your business. That's all fine and dandy, but I want to try something a little bit different here. I want you to just think about what your life is actually going to be like. Because newsflash, the business is not the end goal, right? The life the business funds, the life the business enables is the end goal. It's a vehicle. Ask yourself these 3 questions and write them down. Write these questions down, write down your answers. Okay? If you're driving, do this a bit later, but you can play along and you can answer these in your head right now. What does the perfect ordinary Tuesday look like for you in 5 years from now? Okay, that's the first question. And I find this question to be quite fascinating because we're not talking about the best day ever. We're not talking about you being on vacation. I'm talking about an ordinary Tuesday. Okay? And I actually did this exercise where I did, what's a perfect day look like on an ordinary day? And it took me like 5 hours. I wrote down in a legal pad and I just wrote pages and pages of just ideas. And I would start off writing things I thought I was supposed to be saying. And you're like, well, actually I don't want that, I want something else. And I would rewrite it and rewrite it. So this is actually a pretty important question because if you don't plan your life, life is just gonna happen to you, okay? Things are just gonna happen and you're gonna have to just live with the results. So it's good for you to actually know what you want so that you can go after it. To give you some examples, when you're trying to come up with your perfect typical day, ask yourself a few questions like, where are you? What time do you wake up? What do you work on? Who do you work with? Who's with you in this process? But what does the day feel like for you? These questions are going to start, you know, stimulating some things inside of you so you can start really seeing what the day is like and understanding, is this actually what you want? Second question: What problems have completely disappeared in your life? I love this question because we love to complain and we love to say what we don't like. And this is quite easy to kind of bring all the problems up to the surface and understand, hey, I don't have to deal with these things anymore. That would be great if that was my life. I'm talking financial stress. I'm talking about time pressure, the feeling of being trapped, work, working on things that you hate. These are things that I'm talking about, the things that you wish you could just disappear. Okay. What is gone? What is something that you don't even think about anymore? That's a really good thing to think about because it's going to start making you think about how do I build a business that solves these problems for me, right? How do I make sure that I build a business like, for example, that has very big margins, very thick margins, so I'm making a lot of money, I'm making a lot of profits, so that I don't have financial stress anymore. Or maybe I want to build a business where I only work, I don't know, 10 hours a week, where maybe I'm not making so much money where I'm a billionaire, but I'm working 10 hours a week, I have no time pressure, I can travel the world. These are the things that you're looking for. You're looking for what are the things that I can solve through my business? Third question, what are you most proud of when you look back on that Tuesday 5 years from now? Let's put money aside for a moment, all right? What is the actual thing that you built? What did you actually do for people? What value did you add to the world that makes you feel proud? Okay, this is actually a really profound question because you need meaning in your life. You need for your work to actually mean something to you so that you can keep doing it, so that you can actually feel like getting up in the morning and do it every day. So at minimum, an exercise you could do for this step is to write one paragraph. At minimum, you can write pages if you want, but one paragraph describing your ordinary Tuesday 5 years from now. What does that look like? Step 2: Define what winning actually looks like for your business. Okay? The good thing about business is that you define the rules. You get to choose what winning looks like. It's important for you not to think about what is winning in business in general. I'm talking about for you. Think specifically, because a lot of us, we just think what we should think, like, oh, success in business means making a lot of money or making a lot of impact. You get to make the rules, right? You get to choose what winning looks like. Maybe winning for you is just getting to do what you do. One of my favorite quotes was from the comedian Jerry Seinfeld. One of his first sets as a comedian, he would go out there and he bombed completely. No one laughed at any of his jokes, right? And he came off stage and Another comedian said to him, hey man, I'm really sorry, that went horribly bad. Uh, hope you're okay. And he was like, what are you talking about? That was amazing. He's like, what do you mean amazing? You bombed. He's like, yeah, I know I bombed, but I'm one of those guys now. I'm one of those people that gets up there and tells jokes and I'm a comedian. And he doesn't care that he bombed. He just was happy that he was doing his dream, right? He was living his dream. So maybe that's you. Maybe you're just like, hey, I just wanna be in the arena. I just wanna be playing the sport. I wanna be in business and be a business person. I wanna be a creative. I wanna be able to create films. I wanna be able to create art, whatever it might be. For you, that might be winning. So you get to define what winning looks like. For us, with our software company, Webinar Ninja, winning meant building something valuable enough that a larger company would want to acquire it. Now, why that specific definition of winning? Because I wanted to change my life financially forever. I didn't wanna continue to be on the hamster wheel of change, you know, trading my time for money and hopefully being able to make ends meet. My parents didn't come from means, they're immigrants from Egypt. We barely had enough to get by. Same with Nicole, you know, we didn't come from money. So I wanted to solve the money equation of my life, right? And this was my goal. Now, obviously, this is not everybody's goal, but I got to choose, and I got to choose that was what I was looking for. I wanted to build a valuable company that I can sell one day, and it would change my life forever. Notice that my goal was not to build the biggest webinar platform in the world. It was not to become a unicorn, a billion-dollar company. It was to be acquired by a company that would take it further and pay me handsomely for it. That was the goal. And by having a clear definition, it shaped every product decision, every hiring decision, every feature was built and chosen, uh, in terms of which feature we're gonna build based on that decision. Is it adding value to the company so that it could be a more valuable company? So when I sell it, I can get more out of it, right? That was the whole understanding. And by having a clear vision, it made all my decisions easier, right? For this company, The $100 MBA, our podcast, and our media company, winning means helping as many entrepreneurs as possible to build a profitable business through world-class business education, okay? I actually enjoy what I do every day. I get to work with amazing people. That's fun for me. So I don't wanna retire, right? I wanna have enough free time so I can enjoy my hobbies and enjoy my free time and travel. But at the same time, I wanna be able to build a significant business that makes an impact. That's my vision for this business. And this is why when we measure our results with our business, we choose things that are aligned with that vision. So for example, we have reached over 300 million downloads with this podcast. It's a milestone on the journey. It's not the destination. It is aligned with where we wanna go. We wanna impact as many people as possible. We wanna be the number one resource for people that wanna start and grow a business. So the more that the numbers that indicate that is leaning towards that vision, the better for us. This is what we kind of are aiming for. The definition of winning might not be building a business that generates enough profit to give you, you know, complete financial freedom. Maybe for you it's something completely different. Maybe you want to be able to just have more time on your hands. Maybe you want to be able to create something that you always wanted to create and see in the world. Maybe you just want to put something in the world that says, "Hey, I'm here. This is my stamp on my understanding of this thing," whatever it's a product or service, a piece of art, whatever it might be. Maybe you wanna become the most trusted person in a specific niche. All of these visions, all these are legitimate. None of them are wrong, but you have to choose, okay? You have to choose and you have to commit because without it, it makes business so much harder. It makes it so hard for you to clear, have clear outcomes to understand what your goals are, to align everything that you're doing. Like, for example, if you're going to make your next hire, right, how do you know this is the person you need or this is the position you need to fill? What is it aligned with? Is it aligned with where you want to go, or is it just something that you think you have to do because that's what everyone else does? So as an exercise for this step, I want you to complete this sentence. Very simple. My business wins when blank. When does your business win? How do you know you've scored, right? That you're winning, that you're actually doing what you're supposed to be doing? What's that one sentence? Be specific. And it needs to be measurable so you can say, "Yep, 5 years from now, I have hit those marks. I've hit those milestones. And I know that it is aligned with the vision." So again, my business wins when so-and-so happens. What is that thing? What is that blank? Step 3, identify one, Moonshot. Here's the element that separates a vision that actually motivates you from one that just sounds good. And this is often referred to as a moonshot. Now, it's called the moonshot because back in the day, going to the moon was pretty rare. Okay, it was very difficult. Now it's not so difficult, and the plan now is to get to Mars, right? But you need to have a moonshot, one audacious goal that just barely is believable. Even you're kind of like, "I'm not sure if I can do that." Right? Something that stretches you. Something that makes you feel like, "I need to become something incredibly better. Something that's— I have to reinvent myself to make this happen." We're not talking about, you know, "Let's hit the target of 20% more than last year." No, we're not talking about that. We're talking about a goal that requires you to become a fundamentally different version of yourself and you need to change your business to evolve to a different version of it to achieve this moonshot. You know, when I decided to take the $100 MBA, uh, this podcast to where we have gone, you know, back in 2014, we were just starting out. I wanted to make sure that this podcast was impacting people so that we can grow to eventually, you know, our first goal is a million downloads. And then it was like 200 million downloads, then it was 100 million downloads. And then we're like, okay, we want to go to 300 million downloads. Okay. That was our moonshot. We hit that moonshot, right? And now we have new goals, right? Because now we're publishing on YouTube and we want to, you know, have a different impact there. And you know, that 300 million number is now a billion. So we want to keep stretching ourselves and saying, hey, okay, we proved to ourselves that we did the impossible before. Let's stretch that goal and go for another moonshot that we think that is impossible now, because it's only impossible until you do it. Why is this moonshot concept important? Because when you have to stretch yourself, when you have to accomplish something that seems impossible, you need to take different actions. Okay? You need to do different things so that you can get different results. So, for example, we're trying to impact more people, hit 1 billion downloads, and, you know, get to 1 million subscribers on YouTube. That's not going to happen by accident. I got to take different action. So that means hiring a team, a local team, building a new studio. As you can see, we're in a new studio. You know, we need to invest in new equipment. In better talent. These are new actions, different actions I need to do so that I can be able to get close to accomplishing the moonshot that I set out. Okay. It requires new content formats, new social media strategy that maybe we haven't attempted before. We need to experiment with that. All of this is making me feel honestly uncomfortable, but no one who's accomplished anything was comfortable. Okay, if you want to get to the moon, you're going to get uncomfortable. If you want to accomplish something that you've never done before, by nature, it's going to be uncomfortable because you've never been there before. But you need to make sure that your moonshot is specific enough to plan towards and ambitious enough to genuinely force you to scale. That combination makes a moonshot very powerful where you're like, okay, I can see what are the steps I'm going to have to take to get there, or I can find out what those steps are. But at the same time, it's a little bit exciting and nervous, you feel a little bit nervous about it because it's like, man, I'm not sure if I could do this. That's where you want to live because that's when you become better. Too small, it doesn't get you through the tough times, it doesn't get you to get out of bed when you don't feel like it. Too big and you can get demotivated. So you want it just enough for you to feel like, hey, this is not completely impossible. I've seen other people do this. Maybe I haven't done this before,, but I'm gonna go for it. And the thing about it is that the journey itself is just as rewarding as the accomplishment. In fact, you know, when you hit those goals, like, you know, for example, when we launched in 2014, 6 months later we won Best of Apple Podcasts, which was awarded to 12, uh, podcasts at the time. We won it with Serial and Startup, and it was really, really great for about a day, and then it was back to work, right? We hit that goal. Great. Awesome. Move on, right? And that's fine. But what I love about business is the journey, because it's really who you become. Because let's say, for example, God forbid, you build an incredible business and it gets wiped out. You are not penniless. You're not, uh, you know, in a situation where you can't recover. Why? Because you've learned the incredible skills to get you to that point, so you can do it again. It's who you've become. You know, they say that if they divided all the money in the world evenly, eventually it'll just end up in the same pockets again. Because the people that know how to earn money and be valuable will figure it out. They have the skills to do it over again. So your exercise with this step is to name one moonshot goal for your business. Something that would require you to fundamentally level up who you are so you can achieve it. And give it a number. Give it a deadline. Give it some specifics so that you can have a clear understanding of what you are trying to achieve. Write it somewhere so you can know every single day that's what you're going for. Okay? I can give you plenty of examples. You know, one of the things that Elon Musk, you know, love him or hate him, has said over and over for decades now, almost over a decade, I would say for 15 years now, he's been saying, We're going to colonize Mars. We're going to go and move to Mars, right? He has a clear vision. Everybody that works at SpaceX believes they're going to Mars. Okay? This may sound insane to you, but they have a very defined vision. That's their moonshot. It sounds quite literal, but it's their Mars shot, right? One of my favorite performers of all time, Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson would write on his mirror at home, best-selling album of all time, best-selling album of all time. He would wake up in the mirror, he would look at it every day. Guess what? Thriller, best-selling album of all time till this day. I think he's like, uh, his songs are the top 10 songs on Spotify and he's been dead for over like, what, 13 years or whatever it might be. But the point here is, is that you have to have something clear that you can refer to every single day so that you can get pumped, but also you can know what you're going for. I hope this episode's already showing you the gaps in how you are thinking about your business and the direction you're moving in. I want you to subscribe to the show because we have an upcoming episode I don't want you to miss. It's a Q&A Wednesday question where we answer a question from one of our listeners, and it's how does an ex-con get past his past and his fear of judgment so he can start his personal brand? If you have something that you are afraid to share, or maybe you don't feel worthy, or you have, you know, what they call imposter syndrome, this episode's for you. So make sure you subscribe so you don't miss it because it's coming out really soon. We just finished recording it the other day and it's in the editing process, so can't wait to share with you. Hit subscribe so you don't miss it. Step 4: Build your one-page vision document. One page. And here is what makes this vision super tangible for you and actionable is that it's simple. It's one page, not 40 pages. It's not some huge strategic plan that takes you an hour to understand. No. It's one single document on Google Docs or whatever you want to use. Okay. One page. On this page, you're going to have 4 sections. Section number 1 is your life, your perfect ordinary Tuesday, 5 years from now. One paragraph. Be specific about what this day feels like, looks like, who you're doing this with. What are some of the things you don't have to worry about anymore? All that kind of stuff. Okay. Section 2 of this document is the win. What is the one sentence you want to define in this sentence? What winning looks like, right? Remember that you fill in the gap. Winning means this. When winning happens, this is what happens, right? You want to make sure that you're very specific about what winning looks like in your business. Section number 3, the moonshot, the audacious goal. That one audacious goal you want to go after is the number one thing you have. Have a deadline of some source, have some sort of constraint so you understand, okay, This is what I got to do in this amount of time. This is the number. This is the goal. This is whether it's revenue, whether it's impact, whether it's downloads, whether it's whatever it is, but make sure it's clear. And Section 4, the values. You want to have 3 to 5 words that describe how you will build towards that vision, not some generic corporate values thing that no one ever reads. Okay? We want real operational values that actually guide your decision. Okay? In fact, our company, we only have one value, okay? And it's to care. Like, really just give a damn, all right? Care about your work, care about our listeners, care about our customers, care about our audience, care about each other, care about yourself. All that is just under the value of care. The purpose of values is not to feel good about yourself, is so that you can use them as a filter, right? When you're making decisions, do those decisions align with those values, or are these just theoretical values? So, for example, if I shoot an episode of this podcast, did I put enough care into this episode? Do I feel proud of this? Do I feel like I'm actually serving my audience and I have their best interests in mind? If the answer is no, I need to reshoot this episode. Okay? If the answer is yes, awesome. Move on to the next one and do it again the next time around. You want your values to be specific again and specific enough to create friction when you violate them, right? And that's what you wanna do. You wanna hold yourself accountable and use those values to hold yourself accountable. So to make this tangible, let me give you one exercise to do for this step. Write on a page, doesn't have to be many pages, just any blank page. What are your values as a person, as a business? What's important to you? Okay. Some people, their values are, "Hey, we got to be profitable." That's number one value. Okay? Maybe some people, their value is, "Hey, we need to make sure that we do what we want anytime we want." Okay? Some people want complete freedom. That's a value they have in their business. So, you get to choose your values. But remember, you're going to hold yourself against those values. So, choose wisely. Step 5: Make the vision a decision filter. A vision that lives on a piece of paper stuck in a drawer is not a vision. It's a document, and it's something that you thought you had to do just so you can feel like you're a real business person. Okay? This final step is actually making your vision operational, meaning every significant decision you make gets run through one question: Does this move us towards our vision, or does it move us away from our vision? This is so important. I cannot tell you why, because as entrepreneurs we have a chronic problem. We have an ideas problem. We have new ideas all the time. I want to create a new product, I want to throw a new event, I want to do this, I want to do that. I have all these ideas all the time, and I'm sure you're the same. And how do you know which ones to do, which not to do? Well, you have a vision. Does those activities help you reach your vision? Or does it actually deter you? Is it a distraction? Is it the highest leverage thing you can do to actually accomplish what you're looking for? This question is magic. It's very clarifying because the vision you write down with those 4 specific definitions that we talked about, right? It's helping you understand what you should do and shouldn't do in your business. And guess what? Because you're the decision maker, you will affect so many people and so many ways they work. So for example, if you say, "Hey, we're gonna create a new product. Everybody on your team now is gonna be working on this product and be helping you build this product." All those hours, all that money you're spending is an investment. If that investment is a poor investment because it's not aligned with your vision, that's on you, right? So you need to make sure you cross-reference every activity in your business with the vision, especially when you are choosing between projects or activities. So for example, you might be saying to yourself, hey, you know what? I'm thinking about building a new software product in addition to my consulting business. I'm gonna sell the software to my clients, but I also can write a book. Which one of those, write a book or create a software product, which one is the one you should do? Well, you gotta consult your vision. Which one is more aligned with the vision? Which one's gonna get you towards your vision closer and closer than the other one. So that's how you decide. You refer back to your vision to figure out which thing to do. So as an exercise, for the next 30 days, I want you to run every significant business decision through that question. Does this move you towards your vision or away from it? Right? Maybe you have an opportunity to go on a business trip or go to a conference or make a hire. Are those decisions, when they come up in the next 30 days, aligned with your vision, getting you closer to your vision, or not? Write down the decision, write down the answer, so you document it so you can refer back and say, hey, just like a journal, did I make the right decision based on what happens? Like, say for example, you make a decision and you run through that play and you go to that conference. After the conference is over, do you feel like you're closer to your vision or not? And then you can see if you're making the right decisions. You can see a pattern that tells you whether you've been drifting away from your vision or you are moving closer to it. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. My goal for today's episode was to simplify this idea of a vision. Okay? I wanted to make it super, super easy because it doesn't need to be complicated. And what I found is that the simpler it is, the easier it is to follow. Whatever it is in business, whatever rules you set up for you in your life. Okay? So here's what I have for you. I'm going to tie it up in a nice, neat bow so that you have everything. The complete 5-step plan to create A real vision for your business. Start with your life and what you actually want to build for, what you wanna build, right? Define what winning actually means for you, okay, in your business. Identify your one moonshot, what you're going after that makes you feel a little bit nervous. Build your one-page vision document and make the vision a daily decision filter for you for the next 30 days. That's what you gotta do. As you can see, this is not about dreaming bigger, okay? It's about, getting specific enough that your vision can actually guide you through decisions every day. So that it's actually something you're using, okay? The entrepreneurs who build something that lasts are the ones that know how to do this, okay? They're the ones that understand that without a vision, it's very hard for you to actually make sound decisions. And by the way, you can use this in life too. Say, for example, you want to say, I want to be in the best shape of my life. I want to be fit. I want to be healthy. Okay? Every time you make a decision about what you eat, what you do, if you exercise, does a healthy person eat this meal? Okay? That's the filter. Well, if the answer is yes, eat the meal. If not, choose a different meal. Okay? When you wake up in the morning and you think, "Should I go to the gym? Should I not?" What does a healthy person do? They go to the gym. Okay? They lace up their shoes and they get going. So this is why the vision is so important, and this is why you can apply this in so many ways and not just in your business. And the other reason why I wanted to make this super simple for you today is that you can do it right away, that you can build your vision today. Like, it won't take you long. It will take you a few hours. You can allot a few hours on Saturday to do this. The point here is, is that, that you have what you need. Now you just need to do it. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. I hope this episode gave you the framework that you need to build your vision, the vision that you get to own and get to implement. Now, if you wanna continue learning, I highly recommend an episode that we recently published called How Netflix Grew to a $366 Billion Beast. And in that episode, I share with you Reed Hastings' secrets on how he did this, how he built this team. And this is pulled directly from his own words in his book, No Rules Rules. So if you wanna tune in for that, go ahead, you can find it on the feed of any app that you're using, whether it's YouTube or Apple or Spotify, whatever it might be. We put a lot of effort into that episode. I think you're going to absolutely love it. Thanks so much for tuning in. We are all cheering you on and making sure that you have the support you need. Make sure that you follow us on social, make sure you subscribe to the show that you get our next episode automatically. And of course, you can join our newsletter, and I reply to all my emails. I, I take a bit of time to reply to emails, but I always reply, uh, eventually, uh, to help you along the way and coach you from afar. Thanks so much for watching. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you in the next one.