How to achieve your goal, without a business plan

Realise your entrepreneurial dream with a few choice words.

Whether you have a business plan or not, the most important scribblings you can ever put on paper to aid your venture are the ones that describe your vision of success — your mission statement.

So make a note of what that critical point in space and time — when all your hard work, risk, trials and tribulations, and effort pay off — will look like.

If you are a startup or small business getting going, forget countless spreadsheets and hefty business plans for now, they can come later if you’re feeling industrious. More important than creating these time consuming official documents is to write down in one paragraph the dream you wish to create.

Do this by means of a mission statement. Not necessarily for the benefit of your staff or customers. But one for you so you can define what it really is you are trying to achieve. You’d be surprised how many small businesses or those starting out, when asked, are unsure what it is exactly they hope to achieve.

If you have a partner or co-founder, you may be surprised to find that you are aiming for different things when forced to write it down.

Is it to be the best in sector or to provide most value at a certain price range or to make the most money? If so where, your town, your country, the world?

Be very specific on how, where and what you are going to provide.

Take time and get it into 140 characters if you can — to really focus in on the key points. (The 140 character limit of Twitter’s micro-blogging site really makes you hone your thoughts).

Check out these mission statements…

Amazon’s mission statement: “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”

Google: “Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

These two giants have achieved and continue to deliver on their missions. Interesting that on the huge scale of what they do, that their mission statements are succinct and simple, yet extremely to the point and effective.

This vital paragraph will highlight what it is you are actually trying to achieve.

Do one purely for the aims of the business and why not do one for yourself on a personal level. Is it money that you desire, free time to spend on life, or both? In three years time do you see yourself on the golf course spending the money from your successful exit or do you dream of maintaining an active role within the business you are trying to create and changing the world?

You’d be surprised how many clever and brilliant entrepreneurs have an idea in their head which gets chipped away at day by day, until a couple of years in, they find themselves in an environment completely alien to the one they set out to achieve. Their venture has grown organically to create a world not of their making.

You see, the future can be very different especially if you are not clear on what you would like it to be. Everybody and everything, including the world and all the people connected to your business, through no fault of their own, will shape your dream in a way that grows it into something completely different to the one you had in your head the day you decided to give it a whirl.

Even paying customers will tempt you in different directions.

A mission statement will not only help you get there, but make every decision along the way so much easier. It will stop others passively shaping your future. Each time someone or something threatens your ‘end vision’ a siren should go off in your head.

Once created, your mission statement should affect every decision you make no matter how small. If a key element of the future of your business is to franchise, imagine an opportunity to introduce new software to your business that makes things more automated and simplifies processes so others can be trained more easily, but you are not sure if it is worth the investment. On the face of it, the decision is, does it warrant the investment? But with your ‘end vision’ at the forefront of your mind, it is clear this decision affects the realisation of your franchise dream and the introduction of the software is completely aligned with your mission statement, and so with consultation to your magic little paragraph, the decision is made!

By putting these things off in the false belief that it will be okay for now is just prolonging the time it takes to get you where you want to go. And no entrepreneur is there simply to take in the scenery, so make every decision based on accomplishing your dream.

If a decision based on your current statement doesn’t sit well with you or contradicts your gut feeling, it may be time to change or tweak the vision. That’s fine, people and their aspirations change as they develop. Be clinical, change it and then go back to making decisions, both easy and difficult, based on the new statement of intent.

Write those words down today to shape your future.