MBA2513 Q&A Wednesday: Do I Need a Vision or Goals for My Business?

0:05Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host Omar Zen home and today's episode is Q &A Wednesday. On Q &A Wednesdays, we answer a question from one of our listeners, one of our audience members. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net. I'll make sure to answer it right here on Q &A Wednesday. Today's question is from Sharon and Sharon asks, do I need a vision or goals for my business? I love this question because when I was starting out 20 years ago in entrepreneurship, I was like, what's up with all this vision talk and setting goals?

0:38Is it even feasible or realistic to set three-year goal or a five-year goal? Is it necessary? Can I just roll up my sleeves and get going and get started and start building my business? And what I realized was I was skipping a vital step and I'll tell you why. Did you know that businesses with clear goals are 10 times more likely to achieve success? That's according to a study by the Harvard Business Review. I actually read a statistic that was similar to this about 15 years ago and that's really what turn things around. I was like 10 times more likely to be successful. I'll take that. That's amazing.

1:12Just to set a clear vision and some goals. Let's do it. Right. So sometimes you need to hear some sort of really shocking stat like that to like wake you up out of your stupor and be like, OK, I need to pay attention. I need to get this under control. I need to set a vision. I need to set some goals. But don't worry, I got your back. In today's lesson, I'm going to show exactly how to set a vision and what's this whole vision thing anyway, and how to set real goals that you can achieve and keep track of so that you can make sure you're on track. Let's do it. Let's make it happen. Let's start with vision.

1:46When Nicole and I started the$100 MBA, we didn't initially have a clear vision, but we were passionate about providing practical business education. But it wasn't until we defined our vision, made it super clear that we saw some significant progress. The reason this is true, and this is why it was our experience, is because your vision is what allows you to know what to do, right? It carves out the work for you. So for example, our vision was to create the biggest and best business education platform for new entrepreneurs. We wanted to offer actionable, no fluff content. This vision, this statement, guided every decision for us.

2:31It guided us to create the$100 MBA program. It allowed us to create all the content we created, webinars, and over 2 ,500 business lessons in our podcast. It was the reason why we even started our podcast in the first place. Okay. It's what propelled us to start our podcast because if the vision is, Hey, we want to be the biggest and the best, we need to reach a lot of people. So we need to produce a lot of content. How can we do that? let's do a podcast. And 10 years ago, we made that initial decision that changed everything. That's probably the best decision ever in my life is start this podcast because over 250 million downloads later, we were able to impact so many people and help them start their business and grow it so that they can leave their nine to five and live the lives they always wanted.

3:16So the vision is super important. It allows us to know this is why we are doing what we're doing. And the why is important. It's your purpose. It's what drives you. And that leads me to discussing what is vision really? Okay. What is this idea of vision in business? Let me give you a clear definition of what vision is. Okay. A vision is a clear and compelling long-term goal. It provides direction and purpose for your business. This is super important because because with vision, you know how to win. It's like telling yourself and your team, hey, this is what winning looks like. When we accomplish this, when this is happening, this is when we are winning.

3:59Okay. This is how you succeed. Think about when you learned a new board game or card game. The first thing you want to know is like, how do I win? Right? What is winning look like? Who has the most cards, has least cards, you know, gets rid of their cards first. What is the rules of this game? Right. And your vision is basically that is like, hey, this is how you win. So again, a vision helps you align your team and the stakeholders to yourself. Anybody who's maybe an investor or maybe a partner with a common goal. This is the common goal we have. Right. It keeps you motivated. It keeps you focused, especially during challenging times.

4:33OK, you're going to have some bumps along the way and your vision is going to allow you to get up in the morning with some energy. Okay, this is what I'm trying to do here. Okay, this is what I'm trying to accomplish. This is the vision I have for my business. Here's a little secret about vision. It doesn't need to be something that is reasonably accomplished or you can easily accomplish it, right? It's okay if you don't even fulfill the vision. Your vision really should be something that when you're old and gray in your last days and you're in your rocking chair, you can say to yourself, I think I did it.

4:59I think I accomplished my vision, right? That's really what your vision is. You know, Apple's vision was to have a personal computer on everybody's desk, right? Everybody can own a personal computer and be able to operate a computer. They may or may not accomplish that through the iPhone, right? The iPhone is basically a computer, but everybody in the world, that's pretty ambitious, but it doesn't really matter if it's like doable or not. It actually matters if it's compelling to drive you forward. That's really why you want something that's going to burn inside you. Like I got to do this. It's something huge, something grandiose, something that really makes me feel like I'm doing something significant.

5:38So that's vision. Let's get into goals, right? Why set goals? Okay. Because I've been all over the place with goals in my entrepreneurial career. I've had really strict goals. I've had long-term goals. I had short-term goals. I've had no goals, right? There are some entrepreneurs out there, some leaders in our industry that just don't believe in goals. Like goals are just a bunch of bull and you don't need them. I sit somewhere in between. I think goals are important because goals allow us to work towards something and have us looking forward to something. One of the things we need as human beings is something to look forward to.

6:15I once heard that most of the enjoyment that we experience from a holiday or a vacation is not the actual vacation itself, is actually looking forward to that holiday, looking forward to that excursion, that new country, that whatever we're going to, right? It's that anticipation. It's that something that, hey, yearning for it, that pursuit of happiness, right? That's really what we're looking forward to. And that's really what gives us the joy. And then once we're there, we're having fun. It's great. And then actually the other big amount of the joy you get is reflecting on the vacation. It's like, wow, that was a great time reminiscing.

6:51So you actually get more joy out of the anticipation, the, you know, the striving for the goal or striving for the holiday in this example or the memories of like, hey, that was great. That was fun. So it's interesting how we operate as human beings. We need to work within how we operate, right? So that we can be able to one, be fulfilled, but two, be driven to keep on going and keep surviving as a business. So I believe that goals are important because it gives us actually joy in our business. It's not even about accomplishing things or being the best or anything like that. Yeah, that's great and all, but it actually gives us happiness.

7:27It gives us fulfillment. It gives us purpose. It gives us something to look forward to. So I think goals are important because I've had no goals before. Not so much fun. So the way I like to structure my goals is I like to set up three year, one year and quarterly goals. And by the way, I do this with things outside of business to my personal health, maybe personal education that I want to build. Maybe I want to learn how to pick up a new skill like snowboarding or playing the piano or wherever it is, right? The point here is that having these terms, three year, one year and quarterly every three months or four times a year, it allows me to have some structure to what I'm doing, gives me some structure to what I'm trying to accomplish.

8:09The reason why I don't go beyond three years is because the world changes significantly past three years. If you look at three years ago, the world was pretty much the same. We had something called the pandemic, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. But if you look five years, there's a lot of change. So I don't feel comfortable planning five years ahead. I have a big vision, like I talked about. This is what I want to accomplish. But detailed plans for five years, I think that that is kind of shooting myself in the foot. I like three year, one year, because we could see one year ahead. One year goes like this.

8:41And quarterly kind of breaks it down and say, OK, in the next three months, I got to accomplish such and such so that I can be able to accomplish my one-year goal. So the benefits of setting goals, again, gives you purpose, it gives you meaning, gives you happiness, but also provides a long-term roadmap, right? It helps you plan significant milestones and strategies that you need to initiate in your business. Let me give you a practical example. When we started the$100 MBA show podcast 10 years ago, back in 2014, our three-year goal, our first three years of the podcast was to reach one million downloads a month.

9:13That was our goal. This was our long-term goal. In the next three years we need to do this. So we broke it down. How many downloads do we need to reach or have consistently every single month within one year, two years, three years, and then broke it down to quarterly goals so that we can understand if we're on track or not. Now, here's a secret. We didn't hit that goal, right? At the end of three years, we were just shy of 1 million downloads a month consistently. But by having that goal, it gave us something to shoot for, to rally behind, to keep track of, to cheerlead the whole team and say, hey, we're almost there.

9:47And we fell short, but it's OK, because again, like they say, if you shoot for the moon and miss, at least you land among the stars. Now, that doesn't make any sense when it comes to astronomy, because stars are further away than the moon, but that's neither here nor there. The point here is, is that we fell a little bit short, but it kept us striving for more and more and more. And today we hit 3 million downloads a month in our podcast after 10 years. So it gives us some motivation, right? This is really what's important here about the goals. It's like, hey, a goalpost to reach, something next.

10:19So the benefits of goals, again, gives you purpose, gives you a joy, but also it allows you to break down this grandiose vision into some goals that you can manage. Three-year goals, one-year goals, quarterly goals. Now, when we started our software company Webinar Ninja 10 years ago, it was an incredible journey. And we were maniacal about our goals. We were maniacal about our stats and our data and making sure that we hit every goal. And if we miss it, we figure out why did we miss it? It gives us something to work with here. It gives us something to feel like we're in control, right? By the way, we set the goals, right?

10:53We set the goals. You get to set your own goals. So you have a good amount of control over how you set your goals and what you do. That's the beauty of business. But the point here is, is that it allows you to feel like you have something to manage in this world of business. A lot of times things are out of your control, the market, the, you know, the economy, things like that, but your goals, you can control that. You can manage that. You can actually hit your goals as you see fit. So you know that your vision is important and your goals help you implement that vision over time. Let me give you some practical steps and practical exercises you can do so that you can put this into action right now.

11:30The first thing I want you to do is you grab a piece of paper or a document or your notes app or whatever, and write down, write it down, type it out. Where do you want your business to be? What's the vision of your business long-term, right? Think 10 years, 20 years. This doesn't have to be a stat. It doesn't have to be like, I want to make$10 million a year. No, it could be just what impact do you want to make on the world? What do you want to do? What do you want to be known for? You want people to say about you? What's the vision? Okay. Then I want you to consider writing down in the next three years, what do you need to accomplish to get closer to that vision?

12:06You don't have to accomplish the vision, but how do you get closer in the next three years? Okay. So for example, with Webinar Ninja, our vision was to be the easiest webinar platform for small businesses, content creators. And that was our vision. We wanted to be the easiest one and want to be like the best solution for them, right? They want to be the go-to solution they go to and say, yes, I'm a small business owner. I don't have a huge team. I'm not a corporate. I'm going to go ahead and use Webinar Ninja. We want to kind of be that top of mind brand for that market. So how do we accomplish that in the next three years?

12:42How do we get closer to that? I should say not accomplish that, but how do you get closer to that? Well, first thing we could do is talk about what are the sub markets in there? So maybe we should start with bloggers. Maybe we should start with creators. Maybe we should start with podcasters, right? So maybe we can hit a certain goal in three years, say that we are the number one choice, or we dominate the market share of podcasters that do webinars. That is a good example of, okay, now we're getting closer to that vision. We're not the complete market, but a subset of that market, we can dominate.

13:17And then we'll take on another market in the next few years. So set your three-year goal, identify your three to five major milestones you need to achieve in the next three years to get closer to your vision. So this could be like developing a full product line. It could be establishing partnerships with retailers, achieve$20 million in annual revenue, whatever that might be. Okay. So goals are a little bit more specific, right? They're a little bit more tangible. Now break down that three-year goal into one year goals. Okay. Until you're in the current year, right? The next, you know, 365 days, and then take that goal, right?

13:50Again, we're going to write that goal. Okay. This is what I got to do in that one year. And then the second year and then third year to accomplish that three-year goal. And then what do I got to do each quarter? No, each next three months, the next three months right now, what do I got to do? So basically you're working backwards from the three-year goal, then one-year goal, and then quarterly goals. So let me give you an example of breaking this down into quarters. So let's say your three-year goal is to hit$20 million in revenue. Okay. So I got to hit at least$5 million in my first year to hit 20 million, you know, with momentum.

14:22So if my three-year goal is$20 million, my one-year goal is$5 million. So what do I got to do? Actions, things I got to ship to hit that$5 million goal. Well, maybe I got to develop a new product. Maybe I need to have some more expansion revenue. Maybe I need to have a new onboarding sequence, increase retention. Maybe I got to reinvest in my marketing to boost my sales by X percent. Don't just say, you know, I want to have this and it's more like a wish. No, you want to say, well, how am I going to pull this off? Right. How am I actually going to pull this off in the next year and then break it down into quarters?

14:56So in quarter one, I'm going to develop a new product and then launch it. In quarter two, I'm going to work on a major marketing campaign to increase revenue by 20, 30 percent so I can hit my goal with this new product. Three, I'm going to work on an onboarding sequence so that way I can make sure I retain as many customers as possible, hire a customer success person. Four, I'm going to double down on customer service and lead generation to make sure that I get more leads so I can convert more sales. That's an example. So to wrap up, having a clear vision is like, this is what my business is about.

15:28This is the meaning of my business. The purpose is what I want to do. This is the impact I want to make on the world. Once I have that established, then I'm like, okay, the next three years, how can I get closer to that vision? What would be some milestone? What some sort of stat can I just put behind that? Whether it's a revenue stat or a number of customers or the number of, you know, people that I impact, like for us, it was download numbers for a podcast. So what kind of three year goal, three years is a long time that I can actually hit. Then I scale it back to one year. In this next year, what do I got to do to get closer to that three year goal?

16:00And then what do I got to do this quarter, next quarter, the quarter after that, in my final quarter of this year, break it down into actually projects, things I need to actually get done so that I can get those results. So to wrap up and to answer Sharon's question, vision doesn't need to be complicated. It just needs to be what impact you want to make on the world. Why are you doing this in the first place? It's what gets you up in the morning. And it really drives the goals you're going to set for the rest of the longevity of this business, right? For as long as you have this business. So just starting with three years, one year and quarterly goals, that's a good place to start.

16:34Goals give you direction. It gives you a chance to feel like you're accomplishing things. It gives you a chance to feel like you're looking forward to something. It gives you something to rally behind with your team. It's really important, in my opinion, to have these things in your business because it gives them a reason to kind of, okay, this is what we're looking forward to today. In a later episode, I'll talk about our precision scorecard. This is kind of our dashboard for our business. And this is kind of where we plug in these goals in our dashboard. More about that in a future episode. But this allows us to put that up and share it with the team and say, hey, where we're at, you know, who's responsible for this?

17:10Let's get it going. I'm responsible for this. I got to put it into gear, right? It helps us all be accountable. Thanks, Sharon, today for asking your question on Q &A Wednesday. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net. I'll make sure to answer it right here on Q &A Wednesday. But I want to leave you with a little tip, a little something to look out for. A lot of people forget to do this when it comes to goals and their business. And that is celebrating your accomplishments, celebrating your goals that have been achieved. As entrepreneurs, often we just look forward.

17:43What's next? What's next? What's next? We never look backwards and say, oh, I actually accomplished a lot. Right. And it's actually very important for your and your team to celebrate your wins. That's why you should always start any of your team meetings with, hey, let's celebrate some. What's one win that you accomplished this week? It doesn't matter if it's small, right? It could be super small. It could be like, oh, you know, I emailed somebody who was interested in coming on our podcast and they replied back and we booked a time. Great. That's a win, right? That's, that's getting us closer to our goals and closer to our vision.

18:14Okay. So celebrate wins. And then when you accomplish goals, when you hit milestones, like, you know, revenue numbers or download numbers or whatever it might be for you, right? Celebrate with your team, right? Do a virtual party. We've done this a whole bunch of times, Send them a goodies package or something like that and, you know, have like a virtual lunch together or something like that. Have a chance to say we did it. Yay. Right. Celebrate a little bit. You know, when you score a goal, what happens? You celebrate, right? When you hit that, you know, buzzer beater shot to win the game, celebrate.

18:44You need to celebrate. Otherwise, you're just becoming a slave to the goals, right? You need to enjoy the process, right? Because that celebration is going to reinforce you to keep on accomplishing goals. Thanks for tuning in to the 100 LNBA show. If you love this podcast, if you enjoyed this episode, if it gave you any clarity, why don't you share it with a friend? Send it to a friend on message, on WhatsApp, on whatever, and let them know, hey, I just saw this episode on the 100 LNBA show. I thought of you. I think you'd love it. Thanks so much in advance for doing that. I will check you in the next episode.

19:19I'll see you then. Take care. We'll be right back.