Hey, it's Samantha Hartley of the Profitable Joyful Consulting podcast and I want to welcome you back. This is season two, we're talking about business growth strategies and today, I'm going to talk about visioning, using visioning and vision statements to make things happen in the growth of your business.

Years ago, literally my very first consulting project, I was working with this futurist and I came up with this idea of Visioneering, envisioning the future and then engineering your path towards it and I thought it was really brilliant, of course and I went to the Google machine and somebody had already used that term. So I didn't invent the term itself but I love this idea of seeing what you want to have happen in your business so that you can get insights and ideas into how to build that and that's what I meant to talk about today I find a lot of people are not using this technique and it has huge opportunities. For example, this week my client came to me, we're going to call her Kendra, and she has been wanting to put in place strategic partnerships in her business. That's literally the thing that I talked about last week. Those kinds of strategic partnerships for expanding her business and she's been stuck on this a long time and we finally realized or she realized she just can't see it, she can't imagine what strategic partnerships would look like. Who would do what with whom and how would that be implemented and it’s just like no aspect of it was clear to her, which is fabulous to know because a lot of aspects of it were clear to me so as soon as she told me that, I started unpacking with her. Here are some potential ideas, many ways that these relationships could look. And so she could kind of like try on each of these and imagine them working out, that imagining is really important because it's very hard for you to move forward when you're not clear about things, no clarity means little action and it definitely means it's harder to make decisions about things. So I asked her questions, we talked through some scenarios, we did some imaginary partnerships that could exist and she left that meeting way clearer and then in a minute, I'll tell you how things went from there.

So I want to talk today about how you can use this tool in your business if you're not already in and alot of people are using a little bit of this, but not to the great possibility that can happen with it and I think one of the reasons that people should vision in, in general is that it feels kind of woo woo. I agree that it feels woo woo when you're doing it. And the first place that I learned this tool was at the Coca-Cola company when I was in the field, we brought together our team, we talked about what things are going to look like three years from now, what's the business going to look like? Everybody contributed, we built that illustration of the future company and then our marketing strategies and business strategies were all constructed to lead us through that vision of the future.

So this is what you can do in your business, it's a powerful tool that multi-global multinational corporations are using and you can use it too. So I'm going to go through five really good reasons why you should do it in addition to the ones I just shared and then all of the areas of your business where you might begin to apply this. So first, let's look at what a vision statement is. I consider it a very detailed description of this potential future for your business. One of my favorite terms for it is it's a picture of success and we use this all the time in our work in Moscow when I was with the Coca-Cola Company, we're describing across-language barriers and across understanding barriers, like we're bringing something that people have never done before to them, for example, merchandising. What do we want this shelf to look like? What should this fridge look like? What should this display look like? It's difficult to kind of write down in words and describe it so can we create just a picture of it? And we would create literally, people would have a picture of what they're supposed to match with their work.

And this is doing that with words, sometimes you can have images if you have images for what you want the future of your business to be, but build a picture of success for your business. It's got a lot of detail in it and it's evocative like when you read it, it should excite you. One of the funny things about it is, I mean, this isn't funny, it's wonderful, very often people will cry when they're writing this because it's this thing that we're yearning for, like the reason all of us go through the work that we put in our businesses is because we're building something, we're building toward something and the idea of that thing coming true is very moving for a lot of people. So, write this, describe it as a picture of success. What does success look like? It really answers the question when our intentions are fulfilled and we've achieved the outcome that we desire, what will it look like? How will it feel? And what will be true?

A wonderful thing about vision statements is that they're not just visual. They're describing many aspects of your future. If your business, if we flash forward three years into the future of the thing that you're building, yes, it's like what will it look like when I look around? But also, what's the culture like in your business? What kind of contribution are you making? What's the environment look like? Who works there? What activities are you doing? What reputation do you have? What emotions do people feel working there?

So you get to describe this multilayered experience of this future state of your business. A vision statement can be both analytical and emotional, it can really work on both of those levels because you're describing things that are true like we're achieving these kinds of goals and targets and it also feels energizing to work in this place or people feel like they're making a contribution, we have compassion for our customers you know you can really weave all those elements into it.

A vision statement is not a mission statement because a vision statement is describing how things will be. Whereas a mission statement is describing what you will do and I like to write a vision statement in the present tense because it's kind of like an affirmation.

For example, our offices are filled with a spirit of abundance, smiling faces and incoming phone calls from perfect clients. So why do we do vision statements? I mean, why do they work? Well, one of the things that we know from elite athletes, you know, the downhill skiers before they do their Olympic runs and when they're off the course and not actually practicing, they'll just imagine themselves having a perfect run. We know that Michael Phelps would imagine himself swimming. Well, why is that? It's because of the subconscious mind, as I understand it, believe me, I'm no neuroscientist. But the subconscious mind can't tell the difference between something you vividly imagined and something you're actually doing. So if you're imagining the future that you put yourself through, you get a glimpse of it. You get to practice seeing that reality and it makes it easier for you to achieve that reality. One of the things I love about them is you're creating something that's potential and if you create anything in the future that you don't like or if, as you're realizing that vision statement, you don't like it you could erase it and make a new reality. So it's a really empowering way to see how you want things to be and then get yourself on the path to doing it, just like an elite athlete. Just like an elite athlete, it's easier to achieve what you have previously seen yourself doing, you can make it a reality.

Vision statements are specific, the way they're written, and aspirational, you dream big and when you read that, it should feel inspiring and when you are inspired, then it motivates you to take action. If this is something you have around you and you're able to read it every day, you can plug in constantly into the energy and spirit that you had when you wrote it listen, we know that a lot of days we don't feel that way you don't feel motivated 100% every single day that you're working. So when you do have a day that you're flagging or if you feel like you're taking a lot of shots to the head one day, go back and read that vision statement and you get re-energized. I always call it re-falling in love with your brand and the vision that you had.

A lot of people are surprised at me when they hear that I'm not a goal-driven person and I don't run my business according to goals and people wonder like, well, how can you get anything done and how do you ever achieve anything? I'm not motivated by those goals and a lot of people aren't motivated by sterile numbers and that's why in the vision statement, what you'll write is you can weave in those sterile numbers and you can weave your goals into it, but you write it in a way that is reconnecting you over and over again to the mission and I'll give you an example. Which is more motivating to a startup business? Our year-end sales of 5,000 units or it's the end of the year and we have nourished health-conscious teens 5,000 times with our delicious energy bars? It's not that I'm not trying to achieve anything in my business, it's that the way that I motivate myself is different than with specific goals.

A vision statement sparks and stretches the imagination, so even if you've put it six months away, you weave in all kinds of potential ideas and those opportunities and insights and things that you might dream about, you dream differently for a future that's even slightly far away than you do for what you're doing today. So I see so often people get surprised by what comes up and what they weave into that vision statement and again, it's inspiring and motivating.

And lastly, by envisioning your future, you actually kind of metaphorically visit it and when you're sitting in that future state, you can look back at where you were and you can see your path clearly. It helps you to anticipate opportunities and also obstacles like what are the things that could sabotage our success on our way to this place? You get more insights into that and it becomes easier to build that future that you've visited. As I mentioned, don't like anything in that future? Erase it and write in something new you are in control of that. So think of this as a way to create the future that you want, by visiting it and then building a path back to where you are right now.

So here's the super cool part of visioning as an exercise, you can use it to envision the ultimate business that you want to have, like when I have gotten everything that I ever wanted to achieve out of the business, what's it going to look like? Now for some people and this really includes me, I can't think that far ahead. I can't dream that far ahead but I can dream on a three to five-year time horizon and I love to do planning in smaller increments than that. So you can write the three-year vision or five or 100 whatever works for you and then write in the smaller increments in which you're literally planning right now. So a one-year vision statement in a year it's really easy to do, look at the things that will be true and you can incorporate them and then look. What about a three-month vision? What about a one month vision? You can do a vision for your perfect day. When you envision these things it makes it clearer what they would actually look like and again, this exercise is simply sit down, brainstorm, dream, ideally bring in a thought partner for you or incorporate your team if they're going to be a part of this.

But the first part is just a brainstorm, like ok, at the end of Monday, what do I want to have happened? Write it in the present tense: I'm sitting at my desk. I'm writing my three big priorities for tomorrow already. I'm delighted and excited and relieved to know that I've already finished these things, this went so smoothly, I'm looking forward to this. You can write all of that in the present tense and then take some time to sit with that vision and really energize it. Spend time with the image of the thing that you have built, the perfect day that you have written.

If you're doing this and when you're planning, this is the thing that I want you to print out, put near your computer or something that you look at every single day and read it every single day. I mentioned that we wrote a vision statement at Coke and we wrote a many sentence thing it will all fit on one page, but it was many sentences that we were just thrilled and so excited and so re-energized as a team to write and then one line of that, a one-line summary of that went into the business plan that went off to corporate. You can boil your vision down into that one-liner and look at that one-liner every single day and by the way, this is an internal document you don't need to share it with anybody, you can share it if you want to but this is really for you and for those who are fulfilling this vision.

Here's some other cool stuff you can use this for, Perfect client, if you think back to episode one and if you haven't seen it, please go back and take a look. Episode one, I talked about envisioning your perfect client for so many people they're like, I don't know, I'm not attracting my perfect clients and I don't know who my perfect client is and what do you? Imagine and envision. Envision your perfect client so I shared an exercise about envisioning them in that episode. Definitely you want to do that if you're not attracting your perfect clients or if you feel like your perfect clients are evolving and you're not on top of what they are going to look like in the next six months. How are they going to be in the next month, six months, a year? So do that exercise then.

Team, team, team. I may have mentioned this in the team episode, which was a few ago, but if you have struggled to attract good team members to you or if you're like I got a part, a place in my company for a new person, but I don't know what that role is and I don't know what they could look like. Again, run through this process for that because you can envision who your new team member is, you can envision them and if I were to plug them into the team, then you get to see the movie before it happens, right? And again, don't like the movie? Rewrite the script, but visit the future and envision it, what will it look like with this new team member?

You can do this with marketing activity of any kind, I just did it with a client for an event that he's putting on. Imagine it's happened and you and I are talking on our call, the first call that follows that, what do you want to be telling me about how that event went? It was amazing. I have this many new leads, this many people attended it, here's what happened at it. It went so smoothly, it exceeded my expectations. There were these delightful surprises, that’s creating the vision for a thing that's happening in the future from your future self as if it happened in the past. Well, super complicated to say, and then, et cetera, you can use visioning for almost anything that you want to do: Have a difficult conversation that you have to have and envision it going smoothly. For some people it's a block for them to kind of see things. So when I'm saying envision their thinking, I can't really see anything when I do that. So I will often explain to people I'm a visual person but what I see are words so the visioning process that I do is I write down the words describing that reality.

Some people are visual and they'll do collages or storyboards or vision boards or things like that whatever is your access point into this, I mean, it could be you know, you kind of sing the song of it or it's a dance, whatever is the thing that is going to make that work for you, that you can visit the future and then be able to create it.

So I tell you at the beginning about my client, Kendra, who is struggling to envision what strategic partnerships would look like. We talked through it very clearly, got a lot of ideas of potential partnerships and how they might look, the next day she had a meeting with somebody that she'd been in talks with. It never seemed to kind of go forward, like nobody could really get clear about things. She came into that meeting, they outlined a strategic partnership, boom, boom, boom, like that and that is going to turn into, I'm just envisioning for her a seven-figure deal minimum.

So getting clear about things, envisioning how you want them to be, even if it's you doing it from your side, you influence others to reciprocate and come into your reality and deliver you that. I've seen this happen over and over again. If there's unclarity in a situation, if you get clear, they suddenly get clear and then, in that case, you know what you want. You're in a position of control, clarity, decisiveness. So it's again, it's a tool that feels so woo but actually, it can just explode your business. You can create whatever you want, but you can't create anything if you're not clear about what that is and if you can't really see it.

So for today, what I encourage you to do is set aside some time and envision whether you want to envision your business in three years or whether you want to envision next Thursday going better. Whatever you want to do, set aside some time, and create a vision statement for it and I know that it will bring you the clarity that you need and that will help you to take action on it. I hope this has been helpful and I look forward to getting any questions from you. You're always willing to write me questions, you can actually record a question for me at EnlightenedMarketing.com/podcast. There's a little widget on that page where you can record a question, and I would love to answer it on a future episode, with that I am wishing you a profitable and joyful consultancy.