Having dreams of starting and running a successful company is important, but where do these dreams exist in reality. Those dreams will only exist as just that, dreams, unless you right them down. By having a physical copy or a blueprint of where you see yourself and your company in three years is invaluable to your success.
By forcing yourself to do this simple task 3 things will innately occur.
1. You will be able to ask yourself the same question over and over when facing small decisions: Will this get me closer to my goal of achieving success? If the answer is no then you won't waste your precious time doing something that ultimately isn't worth your while. It streamlines your success.
2. You will acquire a sense of urgency. I can't stress this enough. Urgency is a great motivational edge that you will have over your competitors because while they are contemplating how to accomplish the vision that they have in their head, you will be able to visually project wether or not you are getting closer to your goals. When you are not, you will be motivated to get back on track. Vince Poscente elaborates on using urgency as a tool that can be hard to come by in his blog post on the topic (http://bit.ly/1kb26ZY). I've found that this can be acquired fairly easily through long-term goal setting.
3. It will teach you that their are no quick fixes to a solution and that success takes time. You will stop attempting shortcuts that will ultimately take you two steps back because you will ask yourself before you attempt to take a shortcut that in the long run will this decision ultimately hurt my chances of reaching my goals? If the answer is yes you will make the ethical choice and do things the right way.
So how do you do it?
1. Be specific. Set a goal that you can pin point and measure wether or not you are on track. Look at the difference between the goals for a hypothetical fashion company.
Scenario 1: In three years my company will be selling its products in retail stores along the East Coast.
Scenario 2: My company will have earned over 1 million in net sales and we will have solidified 3 contracts with separate retailers to sell our clothes.
By using specific values in your goal setting you will be able to visually compare your current margins with where you have set your goals.
2. Be introspective. According to Peter Vanden Bos (http://bit.ly/1jC5UjU) this will help you understand how your business ticks, what do you do well and who does what the best. This should and will be a process that may seem counter productive at first but, will ultimately make your company more productive. It will help isolate strengths and weaknesses and point out where you need to improve.
3. Do it now. This will be a recurring theme in this blog and that's to start today. Don't make it a short term goal to set long term goals. Do it now. Before contemplating what the next step should be sit down and physically create the vision that you want your company to become and you'll be that much more likely to get there.
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