Zero-In On Your Vivid Vision Cheat Sheet

First, you need a detailed vision of what your future is going to look like. And here, of course, the personal and professional begin to meld.

Here’s Cameron’s:

“September 2021 my last kid goes off to university, and I will become global. I’m already meeting with my financial planners on this. I’ll probably domicile out of Estonia where it’s a 4% tax free zone. I’ll be able to move my assets offshore, close my company down, register a new company, run all my banking through those tax free zones. Come to Canada two or three months a year. Go to the US two or three months a year. But, basically live in Barcelona, live in Amsterdam, live in Geneva, live in Istanbul and just do one or two months per city for the next five years because I want to travel. I want to do it when I’m younger. I want to explore the world. If you don’t take time to think about what you are working towards in business or in life, I don’t understand the point.”

Now do that – but for your company and its future. You’ve heard the term “elevator pitch.” That one or two sentence mission statement – a jumble of words (mainly buzz words if we’re being honest) that, for the most part, don’t really say much about what you do.

Here’s what an elevator pitch is supposed to achieve:

A) Describe your business in a nutshell or,

B) Inspire your workforce or potential investors/clients.

Go team, and all that jazz  :)

Feels overused but perhaps that’s only because we’ve forgotten the true purpose of it.

Without vivid vision, those words mean nothing. So how does one attain this crystal ball – crystal CLEAR – vision of where you want to be in one, five, ten, 15 years?

“It’s kind of like the three bricklayers. You ask these three people that are making bricks, what are you doing? And one guys says I’m making bricks. You ask the second guy, what are you doing? He said, well, I’m making bricks to build a wall. You ask the third guy, what are you doing? I’m making bricks to build this cathedral, and I get to build the left wall of the cathedral. Who has more meaning in their work? The person that has the vision of what you’re building.” Cameron Herold

Think about what gets people excited. It’s not what happened yesterday. It’s probably not even what happened today or might happen next week! No. It’s what is going to happen in the future.

What you are BUILDING.

When you know what you are building, your customers are more inspired to join you because they’re excited about what your company is going to become. And when you hire new employees, they want to be a part of building something too - if you don’t have a clear vision on what you’re building, then all you’re selling them is a job.

As Cameron explains it, think about building a new house. You have four million dollars. You hire a contractor and say, “Here’s the cash, build me a house.” Then you come back in a year, and you have a nice, quality-built house. But it’s nothing like what YOU wanted for a dream home! Of course it isn’t – you didn’t have a vivid vision – and if you DID, you certainly didn’t share that vivid vision with your poor (probably now berated!) contractor! That sounds a little silly – who would do that, right?

But many, MANY people run their companies without their vivid vision clearly mapped out.

“In the business world, the vivid vision is the entrepreneur leaning out three years into the future, describing their company in such vivid detail about how the employees are engaged and how the customers are engaged and what customers are saying about you, what the media is writing about you, what your meetings are like. You describe operations, IT, marketing, et cetera, and it becomes a four-or-five-page written document that describes your company three years in the future. So literally, leaning out to December 31th 2022 describing your entire company, what it looks like, acts like and feels like. And then you get a professional writer to polish it and make it pop off the page, and you add some design elements to it.” Cameron Herold

The idea is that if everyone can see what you can see, then they’ll work harder to bring that vision to fruition.

Seems outrageously complicated, doesn’t it? Like, almost impossible to map all that out over three years! But it’s not.

Cameron’s book, Double Double, shares another cheat sheet with you – the Jigsaw Puzzle concept.

And you can learn all about that, and much MUCH more, at my upcoming VIRTUAL event: Double to Sell.

Canada's premier, invitation-only workshop for business owners is happening Nov 4 & 5, and early bird tickets are available from August 10, but don’t delay.

Attendance is limited, and regular pricing begins October 12.

This is your opportunity to craft your cash-rich exit strategy with Cameron Herold and a roundtable of your peers.

If you’re a business owner planning to sundown your business within the next 10 years, and want to ensure you have a cash rich exit strategy - you DO NOT want to miss this event.

Hard core strategic planning. An implementation plan. A follow up debrief. And more. All from the comfort of your own home! (thanks, Covid-19) :)

You built a company worth millions. We'll help you exit for 10X that!

Hope to see you there!

Colleen

PS: If you’d like to chat through whether the ‘Double to Sell’ workshop with Cameron and your’s truly is a fit for you as someone considering a cash rich exit, book a call here.