How can you be a visionary without a vision?
I recently sat at a luncheon meeting listening to an entrepreneur talk about her start-up business. The meeting consisted of other successful women in their professional fields and business owners themselves.
The woman had a fantastic idea for a company centering around becoming a personal historian. She is funding this endeavor by making DVD’s of her family’s own history and a book she is looking to get published. Her execution and vision are a little rough though…she isn’t sure how much she wants to make, how much her expenses are, whether the book and DVD are the ultimate goal of her business or the histories…I could go on and on about how unprepared this woman was for the panel.
To say that this woman needs a business plan an some serious goal setting classes is an understatement. She seems to have a lot of irons in the fire and not a good plan for how to pull them out without horribly burning herself. I even offered a contact for one of the best book editors I know after the one thing she had requested in definite detail was to find a book editor, and her response was “Yeah, that’s great, but I don’t have any money to pay anyone.”
And it was hard to sit there and try to offer advice to someone who didn’t want to hear it. She thought she did, but its pretty hard to plan for anything if you don’t know exactly what “thing” should be. I’m continuously astounded by the number of people who think that starting a business is easy and they should just jump on board.
People have good ideas for things everyday, and sometimes even a passion for a particular field or vocation. This does not a business owner make. You need to have ambition, dedication, time, confidence, realistic expectations, advisors/business coaches/mentors to help figure out HOW to start a business and most importantly you MUST HAVE A VISION!!!
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