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Identify Your Vision

Hey guys, welcome back welcome back you want to know what today's goal is alright wu beautiful wei are set okay? So today's goal is to set the destination for your business by identifying your vision we're about to move into session three on this session is all about finding success because to achieve success you must define success and really focus looks really good on you focus is what we can achieve when we know where we're headed when we know what that destination is and so that's what we're going to spend this whole session on session three we're going to start kind of at the top level with identifying your vision we're going to bring it all the way down and start thinking about what individual metrics you should be paying attention to. And then at the end we're going to set a goal that will guide your business for the next six to twelve months. So let's break that down in session three you'll define the vision you're leading your business towards. You'll identify what audience re...

sponses generate riel results you'll track your key performance indicators you'll declare your chief initiative so that you can use focus as a way to stand out sound good, cool so let's review the seven key components of a standout business first businesses that stand out use their strengths they're not trying to get better at their weakness they're not trying teo work on those areas of opportunity that your boss used to tell you about they leverage their strengths they also leverage their passion, what they get really ex excited about what drives them, what motivates them we're really kind of ticked them off they find their unfair advantage they have a clear focus they build their businesses on guiding principles those those ideas that are founded in our personal values they share their vision and they speak with a unique voice and we've started covering a lot of these things already we're going to dive into a fume or so here's where we're at in the process we're starting that middle week with identify your fish in so how does knowing your destination help you stand out first of all do you guys know where you're headed? Yeah okay, that was good. That was a really good response. Yeah, yeah, I got an idea. Yeah. That's what? I hear a lot sure, I know I know what I want for my business. I wanted to be successful. Oh, yeah? What does success look like to you? Because success isn't something that is uh the same for everyone. What I want is probably not what you want, what you want probably is and what she wants and so you know, we really need to sit down and actually define what success is not just for ourselves, not just for our businesses, but for our customers as well, and for the mark that we want to leave on our industries on our fields. When you figure those things out, you can, you know, find the right path. I'm thinking about, you know, being in the uber this morning, and the uber driver knows where we're going, right? Because on his little smartphone uber app, it shows him exactly what turns to make. What do you like to know exactly what turns to make in your business? This is why we have to define success if you don't have a crystal clear understanding of what the vision is for your business, about what your destination is about, where your goal is to end up, you can't make all the right turns in your business. You can't plot out that course that's going to get you there now, here's another thing having a clear vision gives you something to be known for when you communicate your vision to your customers, whether it's in, you know, a vision statement or whether it's, just in the way you show up in your business every single day, you can be known for something and part of standing out is building that reputation of a kn having people understand why you're in business from for in the first place so having a clear vision gives you something to be known for now one business that has a very clear vision and something that they are very well known for is male chimp and so now we're going to go to a pre recorded interview case study that I did with julie gora the brand manager for male champ and she's going to tell us all about how male chimp uses their vision their personal values there guiding principles teo inform all aspects of their organization so when I think of visionary cos one of the ones that comes to mind is male champ they are fun, they're reverent and they've got a really crystal clear vision about what about transforming email marketing from something you know boring and disempowering to something that is accessible to all different kinds of businesses and fun and easy to put together so I'd love to introduce julie gora who's a brand manager at male champ who's going to tell us more about male champ their vision and how the values and vision of male chimp kind of goes through all sorts of different parts of their company because this isn't just a surface thing this is a deep inside thing to write so let's give a big round of applause to you julie gora e o tio uh so let's just start off with that what? Male chimps vision for email marketing so as you probably know male chimps to do it yourself email marketing service. So everything we do is to empower our customers and our users to send better email and help their businesses grow from the little guy all the way up to the enterprise company. We tried to empower everyone to be able teo grow their business to where they wanted to be. Awesome. I love using now, jim for that very reason, but I'm betting that mel chip is probably a pretty fun place to work as well. At least on the outside. It looks like a pretty fine place to work. So what's something that male chimp does or what are some things that male trump does to really foster that happiness for their employees? Well, growth, you know, making sure employees are able to grow how they want and work on projects that that that really engaged them make them happy. Um, all sorts of things, you know what you see outside all the creative fun things you see, those chipettes, um, the vinyl toys, all that stuff it's just imagine was like to work at a company that preys um uh, a really great place that you could go to kind of see what it's really like to work in male chimp is our founder and ceo ben chestnut did a creative mornings chat you could just search for it on the internet I the girl is not pretty but if you look up ben chestnut creative mornings um talk it's a quick twenty minute talk about what it's like to run a creative company and it gives really good insight on kind of what it's like to work email shrimp and how he runs the company and why everyone just loves going to work every day wonderful having a place that you love going to work every day so melt him to me is a really customer centric uh company I feel like I am very loved as a as a customer of male chimp so what do you guys do to make sure that you're keeping your customers really the center of everything? Yeah so our customers are very, very important to us obviously it should be for any business but we really listened to our customer we go out and we meet people I'm a brand manager I goto events I meet people that are running all sorts of businesses have questions about male chimp we interview people about how they use it, we take feedback we and we take that feedback and we make products and we make new features specifically based on customer feedback um you'll see it and everything we do we write blogged posts about our customers to show um examples of really great people that are using milton to grow their business and we send you to pats and we weigh hide little things like high fives every time you send your newsletter and little games that you might not know about her paper craft freddy's thatyou khun build that when people find them they just get so excited and they tweet about it and several people have said they've almost broken their computer by trying to high five that um and that's just to delight our customer yeah, absolutely I see you guys kind of putting that threat of surprise and delight everywhere anytime there's something new I get so excited eso we've talked a little bit about the vision for male champ and I see the vision kind of really informing the philosophy behind the marketing that you guys do how you go out and get new customers or how you make people more aware of the brand so what's male chimps philosophy for marketing and outreach ah, everything already said empowering, empowering the underdog but also empowering anybody creativity is really important to us so we we kind of advertise like a btc company what even though it would be to be a company we want you know, sending news miller letters isn't really fun so put a little bit of fun and creativity into what might be a boring task that you have at your job and delight our customers when they see a winking freddy out in the wild or a friend wearing a chimp at that they they recognize that that's male chimp or, you know, advertising on cereal and everyone here's mail kim and maybe didn't know what milton was before but now they're kind of in on that joke and um so yeah, just delighting the customer is kind of our number one priority and then they'll go back and think I need to see the newsletter male chimps what I should use yeah absolutely love what you said about even though we're a b to b company we market like a b to c company because your customers might be businesses but the person sending an e mail is always a person and it is so clear that you guys see individuals and not just, you know, business bank account on I love that so much that's why I love you guys so much so julie, thank you so much for sharing the vision and the philosophy behind mail champ in all the ways that it really works through your organization thanks for having thanks we give julie around all right, we're back so that was a really great conversation with julie and male champ just continues to be one of those businesses that really, really stands out to me and their vision is a big part of that so where do you want your business to be ten years from now where do you want your business to be ten years from now where do you see it? Do you see it as you see you know just showing up to your home office doing the work day in day out if so that is a fantastic vision beautiful do you see a bunch of franchises all over the country great vision do you see having a team working with you co creating with you collaborating with you are they in your office? Are they outside of your office do you have a brick and mortar location given out ofthis outside of your home what's your vision for where your business is going to be in ten years how do you want to be creating value ten years from now how do you want to be delivering that value ten years from now on what do you want to be exchanging that value for ten years from now here's a question we don't ask ourselves nearly often enough where do you want your customers to be ten years from now where do you want your customers to be ten years from now what transformation do you want to have catalysed in their lives in their work that changes them day by day month by month year by year so that they're in a very different place ten years from now than they are right now and then finally what impact do you want to have on the conversation your businesses participating in ten years from now what impact do you wantto have in the market ten years from now do you want teo change the conversation do you want to throw out a question that no one's asked before you want it brought an answer but no one's come up with before you want to create a solution that changes the game in your industry what impact do you wantto have on the conversation your business participates in ten years from now now this whole visioning idea could be pretty like woo airy fairy like I don't know exactly what's going on so I thought this would be a great opportunity to have a hot seat or two and really get in and get some answers to these questions with you guys so do I have a volunteer? Bridget come on up that was very easy thank you for being quick on their bridget come ana have a seat first tell us who you are, what you do and where we can find you online my name's bridget and I'm a personal chef and I have a personal chef school right teach other people to become personal chef and you can find me at white apron chef dot com perfect. So where do you want your business to be ten years from now so I have the personal chef service um and that's going really well and that's where you're actually personal chef ing for people that's where I have some I mean I'm not doing the personal chef work anymore by somebody else my partner's doing perfect work yes okay so might but my ultimate goal is to have a personal chef school and a place where people a community where people can come and learn about the business okay and is this a physical location is in a virtual location I think it's a virtual oh location okay, cool. So this is more about like the uh business aspect than the learning to cook aspects it is both I mean learning there's there's business and then there's the food side like meal planning and how to figure out what meals they're going to keep in the fridge howto cook like how to make how to figure out what to cook because you only have a short amount of time I see ok cool so that yes gotcha. Um all right. And how many? How many chefs do you wantto have going through this program at any given time? What do you want that community to look like? I have no idea. Okay, I have ten right now. Ok, good that's excellent. Do you see the community really scaling or do you see this kind of being an intimate experience that you're kind of creating over and over again with small groups I don't know this is why I'm trying to this is what I'm trying to figure out great well then I'm glad that you're in the that's why I'm in the way so let me ask you a different question what do you really want to be known for? It's? Hard to say but I I want to be known as an axe like the go to person in the industry. Okay um for like, learning about the business side okay? Because there's nobody else doing that sure. And would you say that's kind of the why behind the starting the school you know, I'm really passionate about food and business. Okay, so it's and it's kind of been my whole life so that's the why? Okay. All right. And, um what is it about specifically being a personal chef because you could have started a restaurant and done business and food you could have started a food truck and done business in food on that and that's great, but you know that that's not what you want to do. So what is it about being a personal chef for teaching others to be a personal chef that really lights you up? Well, there's a lot of things about it it's working in a home kitchen and really being able tio nourish people because you can go to a restaurant but it's not the same nourishing experience um it's the being able to make your own schedule and not having teo work sixty hours a week in a restaurant and there's I mean, this is really passion driven works so being a personal chef is like nobody does it because they have tio they do it because that's something that they really want to do with their life so all of those things okay? And what do you want the customers to get out of working with a personal chef customers so like the people so the personal chefs that your training, the people that are going to hire them what do you want them to get out of that experience? Um health and less overwhelmed? Um, sort of like you get a piece of mind about not having to actually make dinner for yourself and knowing that you have really amazing food for you in the fridge. Okay, so it comes back to this idea of nourishing it sounds like maybe a part of your vision is nourishing the next generation of personal chefs too nourish and emily information and they need to find financial wealth nourishing with them with the information that they need to find kind of that personal temporal organizational? Well, yeah that's beautiful. How do you want to the conversation to have changed ten years from now? I'm not exactly sure so you want to be the goat two person in the personal chef industry, or for learning how to be a personal chef. What is it that's happening now? I want to have changed. I mean, there's, a couple of things that drive me nuts about the industry. Tell us about the first one is just really horrible branding, okay? Just like people these like, d I y websites that are just so bad, and that hinder people's ability to be successful, because they're not presenting themselves in a way that is really showcasing who they are and what their strengths are. Yeah. So you want to up the game on the professionalism and the absolutely absolutely okay, next solent so nourishing their professional wealth as well. You have a beautiful what else bugs you? Um, there's a lot of people that end up under charging for their services. So people that get into the personal chefs I get into the industry and think that, like charging twenty dollars an hour is a living wage. Yes, I mean, people. It's tze it's, a highly personalized service that takes a lot of skill and energy and time. And it's not, you know, if you're coming from a restaurant than making twenty dollars an hour is actually like a huge amount of money for somebody, but people need to charge what they're worth because with hard work yeah, absolutely um okay, so it's sounding to me like the vision for your businesses to nourish the next generation of professional chefs uh and nourish their financial health they're professional health probably their organizational health as well so that they can nourish the next generation of entrepreneurs professionals on dh change makers of that does that sound good? Yeah okay, so that I would say that's a great vision statement for you you can take it in yeah massage it a little bit I want I just want to pick pick at you a little bit more in terms of what this actually looks like um and we will come back later in this session and we'll really nailed down more of an incremental goal you're kind of initiative, yeah, but and I'm not asking anyone to come up with a five year plan or a ten year plan. What I do think you want to know is an idea of where where you want to be and it can change but for now that idea of where you want to be helps guide your course it helps you know it's your gps co ordinates that allow google maps to tell you where you're going yeah yeah so um I think do you thrive mohr as a business owner working with large groups are working with small groups small groups okay, so I would say that intimacy should probably be a part of the vision for the product piece of your business, so you're creating, uh, intimate experiences that nourish personal chefs, professionalism, financial health and I think there's probably also an opportunity if you really want to be the go to person in the personal chef industry, to me, that sounds like a bigger reputation. Yeah, I mean, really, it sounds like the biggest reputation that you can come up, and so I would also be thinking about how you can, um, you know, maybe the core of your business is intimacy, but there's a there's an outer level of your business or a lower level of your business where you're touching more people at once, and I think that events are probably the easiest way to do that. So maybe it's a conference, maybe you put on the beak, the conference to go teo for a person, for the personal shopping industry on dh, maybe it's not it doesn't even have to be a huge conference. It could just be the experience of right, because there's there's that personal chef association by they have they've been around for maybe twenty, twenty five years and their branding is really outdated and the people that they attract is just a completely different person than the people that I'm attracting um and they do conferences and they do that stuff but I like everyone that comes to me it feels not super connected to them so I want to become them for like my generation for sure and do you see do you want to have an influence on what they're doing us well do you want to speak on their stage? Do you want to write articles for them? No okay, brilliant I do my own thing perfect I mean, I would say that's a natural that's a natural first step but if you don't want teo brilliant don't okay cool so we've got kind of a vision statement we've got an idea of what this looks like in the future that's exactly what you need that's what we're going for in this lesson you feel comfortable with that great cool let's get one more person up here who wants uh meghan there was lots of volunteering. All right, megan tell us who you are, what you do and where we could find you online uh my name is megan roop and you can find me at making group dot com and I am a coach and retreat leader for women and I'm in a transition right now and need help with that that vision so this perfect alright, cool where do you want your business to be in ten years? Um I'm not sure okay um I I I'm really loving, creating intimate experiences for women through retreats and so ten years from now, I sometimes you know, stop myself, I think know that's crazy, but I love to be like around the world teaching and creating those experiences for people. I think that sounds brilliant, so that ten years for now, that would be why does that sound crazy to you? Because I'm a long ways ways ten years from now, I'm not asking what you want to do tomorrow, right? So one if you're feeling completely clueless on where you want to be ten years from now, one thing that you could dio a really popular exercise that a lot of people here use is thinking about your ideal day, your ideal work day on because you can find it everywhere. I won't put you all through it, but so if you're telling me that what you're really loving today is creating intimate experiences on what you'd really like to be doing ten years from now is just more of the same, but in different locations maybe you know, a different financial levels with different types of clients that sounds perfect. Sometimes the way we spend our days is just a stepping stone to something else, right? Like there was a time in my business when I created ten thousand feet, but now the quiet power strategy program where the the reason I created that program was because ultimately I wanted to be working with business coaches, actually training business coaches on the process, so that's, why I created the entrepreneurs program so it was a stepping stone I love coaching business owners obvious, really, but what I really wanted to do be doing with this other work cause I didn't wanna have to hold back my geekiness anymore, like, I wanted to be able to go so deep and so strategic and so geeky with people on these ideas and not have to hold back. And I also knew that by training more people in the process, I could help more business owners as well. And so the work that I was doing on a daily basis was great, and it wasn't where I wanted to end up. I had a different vision in mind, and so there was there was this process, right? But if you're telling me that you love what you're doing right now, and you just want to do more of it, and he wanted to look different, yeah, it's perfect on. So I don't think you're that far from it at all, uh, because you you could get a group of people together next week and take them to bali, bali, if you wanted teo. Yeah yeah exactly so you know building up I'm gonna hold you to that no it's building up the scale of your business shirt makes that much easier building your platform building your audience makes that much easier but you're not that far from it and so I think that that as a vision creek for you creating those intimate experiences on being able to travel which I know you love sounds beautiful so where do you want your customers to be ten years from now? Um well in a lot of ways I want them to just be living the life that they want to be on living on their own terms in their own way so it's very similar like to how you talk about business and like let's do business your way I want people to be empowered to live lives they're way not by so many of the people I work with are always seeking outside advice and opinions and not trusting themselves and trying teo you know, do the next cleanse or read the next self health book and I just want them to trust themselves and be living life from that space beautiful could we say that maybe identifying unusual or unconventional opportunities and making choices on their own terms? Yeah it's definitely choice like you have the it's like your freedom and happiness is your choice it's up to you right? I just the only reason I've yeah you know, you know I love words and that I think words change a lot about how we're how we're thinking and this idea of living life on your own terms while I completely agree with you it also doesn't tell me a whole lot like it doesn't it doesn't have the specificity that a nayda of value or transformation really requires to me living life on your own terms is about identifying those choices where even think there were choices before yes, definitely cool on what kind of impact do you want to have on your industry are on your mole and part of this is where I want to see my customers and part of the impact is I think the big like the missing piece and like um this personal growth is a connection to the natural world and back to nature er on dh connecting tow ourselves through nature experiencing like self empowerment as women through I mean like building a campfire and setting up a tent and having those adventures and wilderness and then also living a daily life in season with nature in the rhythm so nature's going through and we're going through his women um so I want to see people learning how to harness that, um because I think that's one of the big missing pieces right now, okay, so I see you're there was a lot of words again no no no those were really good weren't those were very specific on different and you know we've been we're talking a lot about difference not everyone wants to bring people back to nature and have adventures I mean that word adventure I hope that was one of your personal values yeah yeah good cool s o the vision statement that I hear coming together for you is that you want teo empower uh women two through intimate experiences of nature and adventure and travel so that they see opportunity and choice where before there was none yes yeah does that sound good? Yeah, that feels good cool and what does that look like to you? Um is it just a serious of retreats is there some no, I mean because the other pieces like I do enjoy working with people one on one but not large amounts of people so part of it is that I also enjoy like the virtual aspect like for people who can't necessarily go away for a weekend or even a day so finding ways to meet people where they're at um to really tune in and harness some of these things I want to talk about okay, cool. So, um this vision statement to me is really important and thinking about how you're going to take this online or take it into the virtual realm because do you guys think like your normal old webinar is gonna work from agon no. So, you know, you really want to be thinking about how can I create an empowering, intimate experience that leverages nature and adventure and travel? But in the virtual spear, what does that look like on dh? Maybe maybe it's, not even virtual, maybe it's a book, maybe, you know, I would say, you know, elizabeth gilbert's eat, pray love is a great example of intimate experiences in travel and adventure that you know, that it has touched millions of people virtually, but on the page. And so, you know, maybe it is a webinar for you, or maybe it's ah, video siri's or maybe it's some sort of course, but those are the things you need to add in though that's the vision that you need to be working toward with that offer, not just another personal development course. Yeah, right? And I'm not implying it all that that's what you were thinking? No, but that's where it gets stuck exactly like I see how it works for other people, but that's, right? And I think vision statements are one of the ways that we can get past those stuck points when you know where you're headed. Even if you don't exactly know which turn is going to get you there fastest, you make it you make a turn and then you kind of recalibrate you re orient, right? And you look for what the next turn is going to be so you don't have to stay stuck, you don't have to stay paralyzed because you know where you want to get and so even if you make a wrong turn, you can take a deep detour back or you can just create a new path like my uber drivers, I never know how to get to the studio because every single day they take a different route. I've no idea where I am in the greater scheme of san francisco, right? And that's okay, you can do that with your business too, but it's about not being stock, nobody ever drives around in a circle trying to find the right path to creative live there they start with one turn if they can't make that turn because the traffic or something, they'll take a different turn, right? And so having that vision allows you to get out of stuck and make some decision, you know, so like if next week you had to put on a webinar, what with that weapon are looked like? I don't know, I don't think I do a webinar, ok? What would you d'oh, um, I think I'd do something more that's like just a daily integration you know, not I keep to keep continue the word challenge but not necessarily challenged it, but just like little practices every day people can integrate um, teo to see shifts in their life. Sure, a daily integration experience? Yeah, beautiful. I love that. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Alright, so that's the idea of what vision khun do for you? Do you guys feel like you've got a stronger idea of what your vision might be or something that you that you can work on between now and the next lesson? So community communicating a clear vision helps your prospects no what to pay attention, teo, and helps your business cut through the noise. Having that clear vision mein means that you're always on message you're always on target, you're always super focused and when you're on target on message and super focused, your customers know what to pay attention, teo, even though all that noise is happening all around them, you are signal because they've identified that the vision that you have for them is the vision that they have for themselves. The vision you have for them is the vision they have for themselves and the other good news about that too is that if someone doesn't have that vision, if the vision you have isn't their vision for themselves, that just means they're not your customer and being able to say that, oh, you don't want you don't want to go to creative live when you get in the uber car, you want to go, teo zynga o stuff around the street, I don't know how to get there from here either, but you want to go someplace else great! This is not the car for you, all right? So understanding that vision, being able to communicate it and remember show, don't tell, although a vision statement could be a very powerful thing as well show, don't tell knowing that vision allows your customers to say yet this is the car for me. This is the service for me, this is the product for me, so vision your vision is part of your standout style. So as we build these stand out style guides for your business is this is a key piece. This is a piece that keeps you on track that keeps your guiding principles clear, that keeps your execution, the metrics that you're paying attention to, the actions that you take on a daily basis, keeps them focused, and focus doesn't just change the way you work. Focus changes the way others perceive you and your business so that you can have that reputation that you want so that you can be known for what you want let's, take a look at today's homework so the first piece of homework is to write a vision statement for your business and you can model yours just on exactly what I did with bridget and meghan answer those three questions where do you want your business to be ten years from now where do you want your customers to be ten years from now and what impact do you want tohave on the conversation your businesses participating in ten years from now where do you want your business to be ten years from now your customers on what impact do you wantto have on the conversation ten years from now make sure that your vision statements are very value focused noticed that when I was talking with bridget we were really concentrating on nourishing her personal chefs financially organizationally professionally so that they could nourish their clients with megan we were talking about intimate experiences that empower people and using travel and adventure to do that that that's a very valued driven a very customer driven statement even though this is a bit vision statement about where you want to be in your business what destination you are plotting a route too it absolutely has to be customer focused as well because you are only going to be able to plot that course if you know what you want to help your customers accomplish makes sense it should be a cz much geared to your customers future as yours as a business be specific just like I said with, uh, with meghan, be specific, it's not just about living life, the way you want to live life, it's about seeing choices where there were none before, uh, that that small shift makes things much more tangible, much more concrete against people much better picture of what you're actually helping them to accomplish, and when they know what they're going to get out of working with you, they're much more likely to get the credit card out. That's good, right? Alright then poster vision statement on facebook and tag creative live in terror gentilly you can also use the hashtag on facebook to I've seen lots of people posting with the hashtag on facebook as well as twitter and that's. Fantastic! So post your vision statement on facebook and tad creative live inter gentilly because your facebook fans, your potential customers, your existing customers want to know what your vision is, it's one of the ways that they that they align with your business. So this is a great thing to put out in a really public place like facebook.