One of the most important things that you can possibly have in an e-commerce business is a Vivid Vision for the future of your company. Your vision will be the compass that guides you through the journey of building your business and leads you to whatever result you are hoping to achieve.
Whether you simply want to sell your business for a couple of million dollars in 3 years, or you want to change the world for the better, you absolutely MUST work out a vision for what you hope to achieve.
For years I have spoken about the importance of creating a vision for your business because it has so many incredible benefits. Things got even more real once I read Vivid Vision by Cameron Herald. This book is a must-read because it perfectly articulated and expanded upon all of my thoughts on the importance of vision, how to create one for your business, and how to use it to guide the business forward.
Today I want to touch some of the reasons why you need to create a vision for your business and the kind of benefits you’ll enjoy once you have yours established.
You can move mountains
The only way to have a big impact on the world with your business or build a business of any real size is with a big vision. You can do incredible things and grow by leaps and bounds if you know exactly where you are going. Once you know where you are going, the pathways on how to get there become clearer and it will help eliminate a lot of the guesswork.
It tells the world what you are up to
Painting a clear picture of where you are heading makes it easy for you to position yourself favorably with customers and members of the media alike. Customers can see that they are contributing to something bigger than just a product sold to make money and often share this with people on your behalf. Members of the media love to speak with visionaries and industry leaders who have their sights set on the future.
Bring on or avoid the right people & align them
Getting everyone on the same page is exponentially easier when they see where the whole ship is headed. Working towards accomplishing a large vision can help push team members through difficult times, and allow them to see how what they are working on now (no matter how small it may seem) is actually bringing the whole team closer to the finish line. You can also attract key team members who want to accomplish your vision with you. In many cases, we have attracted A-list talent when we couldn’t afford to pay them their normal rates because of our vision and eventually were able to compensate them properly. They were able to stomach a small pay cut because they knew, in the end, they would get what they deserved AND accomplish something special.
It will also encourage feedback from some of the Rockstars you may employ on how to modify a process or project in order to achieve the bigger goal. You might have blind spots in their area of expertise (you can’t be a master of everything, nor should you), so if they know the desired end result they might be able to help you develop better pathways of getting there as opposed to simply following directions.
Sometimes this process is also effective in getting people off of your team who aren’t bought into the vision, or in deterring certain people from jumping on board that won’t be a fit for the long term goals. It is better for both you and them to have these people off the ship sooner than later.
Allows you to get better deals from suppliers & partners
Many times strategic partners (like fulfillment centers and sales channel partners) and suppliers (like manufacturers and packing suppliers) can get just as excited about your vision as you are. When we were launching The Beard Club we knew we had something special, and we needed a manufacturing partner that could grow with us and get us great pricing to fit our cost model. We used our vision to show them where we were headed with the business, and so they were able to offer us prices that weren’t as ideal for them at that moment with our first order volumes, but quickly became worthwhile with our next orders at a much higher volume.
Creating a Vivid Vision is an absolutely vital component in building a great ecommerce brand. Furthermore, it is a really fun process to go through. Cameron’s book provides a practical and simple framework on how you can pull that vision together, use it to drive the business forward, and make incredible things happen with your business.
