Do you have a Painted Picture for what your company will look like in 3 years? When I say Painted Picture, I mean a vivid and detailed picture of what your office will look like in 3 years. Who's on your team? What kind of marketing are you doing? What do company meetings look like? What kind of press is your company getting? What kind of clients are you working with and what are they saying about the results they’re getting? What does your daily schedule look like as the CEO? What is your company’s focus? That last one is the whole point of creating a Painted Picture: focus.
In order to achieve extraordinary things you have to envision your future.
That vision allows you to focus on building your dream business and nothing else. Without a Painted Picture, every idea sounds like a good idea and you’ll be haphazardly changing course constantly and most likely accomplish far less than what you had hoped (I am speaking from experience here).
However, with a Painted Picture, you have made a decision about what you want your company to look like in 3 years and then you do only the things that will help you achieve that vision. You’ll be saying no to most opportunities that come your way and saying yes to accomplishing your dreams.
Most likely, right now, you have no idea what you really want. You say you want to reach $1 million in revenue by 2016 or that you want to have 10,000 customers by the end of 2017 but are you doing what you need to do in order for that to happen?
Or are you living in a fantasy land where you pretend that you can accomplish 1,000 disparate things all at the same time?
Making BIG THINGS happen and reaching your BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) means that you have to give up the mediocre to get to the great. It means you have to say no to some seemingly good opportunities to achieve exceptional results. It means you have to focus and nothing gets you focused like a Painted Picture.
On September 1, 2015, my company will turn five years old. I am incredibly proud to have made it this far. Most businesses don’t. While Rodgers Collective has served thousands of entrepreneurs and small businesses and made some incredible products, we got here haphazardly and it's taken much longer to reach certain milestones than I would have liked. The reason it took longer is that I kept shifting my vision for my company ever so slightly. Every shift set us back at least a smidge. Some shifts confused my customers, some shift confused my team, some shifts meant tossing what we had been working on and going back to the drawing board. All shifts meant time, money and energy were discarded.
Recently, I drafted a Painted Picture for Rodgers Collective P.C.
This is my vision for what my company will look like in 2018. There will be no shifts. We are 100% focused on accomplishing this vision. We will have to say no to some things that we would otherwise want to do. We will have to stop doing some things that we have enjoyed doing. You cannot focus if you don’t make any sacrifices. I am willing to make those sacrifices in order to become great.
Here is the Painted Picture for Rodgers Collective P.C. I want to share it with you as a member of our community. I want you to understand where we’re going and to help hold us to and/or contribute to the way we accomplish this vision. Feel free to share it and to use it as inspiration to create your own. My hope is that my Painted Picture will inspire you to focus on creating an amazing future for your company.
If you want to understand how to create a Painted Picture, check out this week’s RRTV video. I go over the details of how I created this vision, why it should be for a three year period and some resources that you can use to help you create your own Painted Picture.
What is your vision for the future? What do you want your company to look like in 3 years?
