Business Owners, Start Your Dream Engines

Posted on by paisleydemby1

Dealing with the effects of an Entrepreneurial Euphoric crash.

I am often asked what is the biggest determinant of a business’s success?

While many factors come into play — like the economy, industry, competition, target market, marketing strategy, experience, education, motivation and access to capital — my response is often, the mindset or vision of the founder.

Lewis Carrol said, “if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

All too often entrepreneurs simply have not articulated their vision, and when they do it’s through logical goggles.

They will tell you they are focused more on surviving than thriving.

All things being equal, if two entrepreneurs start the same exact business, in the same exact environments, with the same exact resources, the sole determinant of the difference in their outcomes is the vision they strive for.

When meeting with business owners, one of the very first questions I ask is, “what is your 5-year vision for your business?”

I am often told no one really knows, but I ask the question to get a sense of what the business owner is thinking. Without a vision, that is powered by your wildest dreams, your business will go only as far as your logical eyes can see.

I met with a business owner in the marketing and printing business several years ago. Let’s call her “Dream” to respect her privacy and net worth. Dream thought her business was doing great because it earned roughly $700K annually. When I asked for her 5-year vision, Dream solely focused on her limitations and believed she could not surpass the $1M mark based on past performance.

If a business responds to my 5-year question with an answer they believe they can logically support, my first response is to suggest a more aggressive result. You’d be surprised at how far an aggressive vision can take you.
I asked Dream if she could have logically seen where she was today on this date five years ago.

The answer to this question was, and is often, “no.”

Many things have occurred during the past five years that weren’t imagined, but were unexpected, ideal and welcomed because of preparation. Think about relationships, resources, and opportunities.

I then responded, “If you could not see your current revenue five years ago, then why are you operating in logic?”

Business owners often operate in a state of hope while referencing logic for their future, but live an illogical (some would even say supernatural) existence from their past.

See where this is going?

It goes without saying that logic is limiting because it rules out coincidence, luck, or serendipity in your future — especially when you’ve prepared. Who wants to live without those gifts?

I told Dream we were going to take her business to $7 million in five years or less. And I did stress the less. At that point, she said if she did not realize $7 million in her business, she was going to do a negative op-ed piece on me in the New York Times. My response was simply, “O.K.”

I then shared that when a business has a target revenue and a time frame to achieve its goals, no matter how aggressive, it is then positioned to develop opportunities to achieve the goal. I simply asked Dream to adopt our new found vision and reluctantly she did. Over the next several weeks we identified many ideas to grow her business.

We also created an Opportunity Analyzer. The first metric was ‘Risk Level’, the second was ‘Will this idea grow revenue to achieve $7M in 5 years or less’. We added a few other metrics that aligned with Dream’s mission, vision and values (MVM).

We developed ideas from a whole host of resources — industry best practices, competitor analysis, and target market research.

Dream shared her new vision and solicited ideas from her team, industry experts, and her board. As we developed ideas to grow, we plugged them into the Opportunity Analyzer to determine which ideas were best for the business in alignment with her MVM.

I call this the “Science of Doing Business.” The business failure rate would drop if more businesses engaged in this process. When you’re strapped for creative capital, the resources to take you to the next level are often right beneath your nose.

Fourteen weeks after Dream and I began working together, her business realized $4.2M in revenue and 6 months later was offered a $10M multi-year contract. How about those apples? Dream never wrote an article in the New York Times.

I often meet entrepreneurs with an idea for a business who experience a disease I call “Entrepreneurial Euphoria.” They don’t have a product, service, location, customer or bank account, but yet they are s-o-o-o-o happy.

Were you like this when you came up with your business idea?

The beauty of this disease is that entrepreneurs are perpetually in a state of dreaming and are happy as clams. But when business owners begin to experience those things they call problems, challenges, struggles, and obstacles, they turn off their dream engines.

Now hear this, if you are a business owner, turn your dream engine back on. You have permission to step outside of logic every day concerning your business. You are positioned to dream and take advantage of growth opportunities you may have never imagined before. All you need is some gas in your tank.

So, articulate your vision, make it aggressive, and get where you are going, fast.

28 thoughts on “Business Owners, Start Your Dream Engines”

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