What’s the reason you started your business?

What’s the reason you keep persisting during the dark times when nobody was interested in buying from?

What’s the reason you put in all the time, money, effort, blood, sweat, and tears into your business?

Take a moment and answer the above three questions.

I could phrase those three questions in three words…

What’s your why?

When your why is strong enough, your present reality doesn’t matter.

Getting clear on why you do what you do will make all the difference in the world for the future growth of your business.

Now that you have your why, it’s time to focus on what you want.

If you think about it, the majority of your life will be spent in your business.

We have a limited amount of days on this planet, so it behooves us to make the most of what we have.

Why not spend life striving for our dreams?

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.

Dreams are important for setting the intentions of our lives.

Dreams are the foundations of our futures.

Dreams give us the motivation to persist toward a worthy goal or objective.

Dreams are what the best lives are made of.

If you think about it for a moment, everything amazing in life first occurred because someone dreamed of it first.

Orville and Wilbur Wright dreamed that man could experience powered flight.

Henry Ford dreamed that everyone could own a car.

Roy Kroc dreamed that there would be a McDonald’s in every town in America.

I dreamed in my youth that I would have a happy family with children I adored.

I dreamed that one day I would have an Ideal Business.

With a dream in mind, people then transformed that dream into reality through their actions.

When I first start working with someone new, I take them through a workshop I call Designing Your Ideal Business.

The idea behind Designing Your Ideal Business is to envision the best business and life you can imagine.

There are three phases of the Design Your Ideal Business.

• Phase one is where you describe what your ideal business looks like.
• Phase two is where you describe the current state of your business.
• Phase three is where you identify the gaps between your ideal business and your current business.

In Designing Your Ideal business, I look at four areas of business.

The four areas of the business are:

1. Personal
2. Operations/Team
3. Money
4. Customer

Achieving Ideal status in each of these four areas of business will bring people to the reality of their Ideal Business.

We are the masters of our destiny, so let’s create the destiny we so richly deserve.

Jim Rohn said, “Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you.”

Phase 1 Ideal Business

I ask the following people the following questions to identify what ideal would look like.

Personal

• How many hours a week would you work?
• How many days a week would your work?
• How many weeks of vacation do you take?
• On a scale of 1 – 10, how happy would you be?
• On a scale of 1 – 10, what would your stress level be?

Operations/Team

• If you could only work on one thing in your business, what would that be?
• What type of people would you add to your team?
• What would you need to add to your business to make it world-class?
• What do you love doing most in your business?
• What should you delegate to someone else?

Money

• How much money each month would you like for your personal lifestyle?
• How much money would your business have in cash reserves?
• How much money would you have in your retirement account?
• How much money would your business profit each month?
• On a scale of 1 -10, what would your money anxiety level be?

Customer

• What industry are your best customers in?
• What attributes do your best customers share?
• What customer attributes bother you the most?
• How many customers do you want?
• What would you do to nurture relationships with your best customers?

Once you’ve answered these questions, it’s time to move onto phase two.

Phase Two – Current Business Status

I ask the following people the following questions to identify what ideal would look like.

Personal

• How many hours a week do you work?
• How many days a week do you currently work?
• How many weeks of vacation do you currently take?
• On a scale of 1 – 10, how happy are you?
• On a scale of 1 – 10, what is your stress level be?

Operations/Team

• What are you currently doing that you hate doing?
• What is keeping you from adding your ideal team members?
• What are the roadblocks that prevent the business from being world-class?
• What’s keeping your from spending more time doing the things you love in your business?
• What’s keeping you from delegating more?

Money

• How much money each month are you currently making for your personal lifestyle?
• How much money does your business currently have in cash reserves?
• How much money do you currently have in your retirement account?
• How much money does your business currently profit each month?
• On a scale of 1 -10, what is your current money anxiety level?

Customer

• What percent of your customers are your best customers?
• What are you doing to attract and gain more of your best customers?
• What customer attributes are you currently tolerating?
• How many customers do you currently have?
• What are you currently doing to nurture relationships with your best customers?

Once you’ve answered these questions, it’s time to move onto phase three.

Phase Three Identify The Gap

In phase three, you will look at the answers for each area of your ideal business and compare it to your current business status.

As you review the answers for each question, identify the gap between ideal and current.

For example, the following questions cover work hours per week.

• Ideal = 40 hours per week
• Current = 65 hours per week
• Gap = 20 hours per week (65 – 40 = 25).

Once you have identified the gap for each area of business, there is one more step in phase three.

Identify the top priority to work on.

I often ask the following question:

If you could only work on one thing now, what would you like to improve most?

The answer to this question identifies your top priority.

Now you know what to start working on first.

Conclusion

One of the beauties of owning a business is we control our destiny.

Owning a business gives us the power to create the lives of our dreams.

However, we must be intentional in designing our ideal business.

Without a clear understanding of what we want our businesses to be when they grow up, we will be left to the whims of our circumstances.

Many people get caught up in the hustle and bustle of day to day operations of running their business.

This continual hamster wheel approach often leads to a business that turns into an ugly monster that controls our lives.

It’s important to craft a vision of your dream business.

By designing your ideal business, you identify the specifics qualities of your ideal business.

Once you know what the specific qualities of your ideal business, you now can put the actions into place that will create those qualities in your business.

Create the business and life of your dreams!

You Deserve It!