What do you want out of your business?

“Your vision of where or who you want to be is the greatest asset you have.”

This is a quote from a brilliant little book called “It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be” by Paul Arden (Phaidon, 2003).

Sadly Paul is no longer with us, but in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, as Executive Creative Director at Saatchi and Saatchi he was responsible for some of Britain’s most successful advertising campaigns.

I picked up this book recently on a family visit to Australia, and it set me thinking. What Paul is talking about really, is having an ambition, a goal, a vision.

Your personal ambition

Whether you are starting up a business or managing a small business of your own, obviously you are doing that for a reason. It is an ambitious thing to do, running your own business, whatever its size.

But have you set yourself real goals? Is there something concrete you are going after? What is your vision of where or who you want to be?

Your vision and your business

Do you want to be rich and retire at 50 with a yacht and a house in the Mediterranean, or work until you get your state pension, retiring with your own house and sufficient savings and assets to bring in a decent retirement income?

But there is more to ambition than that. For example you could just want to be famous, or become an MP.

In business terms, however, it is your desire to achieve a certain level of wealth through business that determines how big and how profitable your business has to be.

Take a pause and think

Faced with the daily grind, it is easy to lose sight of the long-term. I guess most of us in business need, from time to time, to take a pause and see if we are on track to achieve our goals. If we are not, we can think about what changes we need to make to re-align our business with our personal vision.