What’s your perfect day? How to create a business vision – and make it happen!

Do you sometimes feel lost running your business? Learn how to design your perfect day and create your business vision – then make it happen!

When you run your own business, you don’t have a manager setting you targets, or telling what what they want you to focus on this quarter. Instead, you get to steer your own ship.

Which is great, in many ways – and often a big part of the reason you may have become an entrepreneur. But it’s also hard.

Because, as much as you may start your business with a clear vision (I want to run a successful design business, I want to make and sell cakes from home etc), what your business looks and feels like on a day-to-day basis is often less clear.

And without clarity on what you want to be doing every day, and what direction you are driving your business in, it’s easy to get lost. And find yourself working without direction or beginning to loathe the tasks that eat into your time.

So how can you change this?

Design your perfect day

There are two important things you need to do, to ensure you steer your good ship enterprise in the right direction. And the first is to design your perfect day.

Designing your perfect day simply means considering what you’d like your average work day to look like. Questions to ask yourself include:

  • What’s your morning routine?
  • What time do you start work?
  • Where are you working?
  • Who are you working with?
  • What are you working on?
  • Are you working on one project or a mix of tasks?
  • How do you feel about your work?
  • What breaks are you taking?
  • What are you listening to?
  • How many hours do you work?
  • What happens at lunch time?
  • What time do you stop work?
  • What do you do when you stop?
  • Do you work in the evening?
  • If so, what are you working on, and for how long?
  • What time do you sleep?

As you can see, the questions aren’t solely work-focused. They’re concerned not just with what tasks you do, but with how you feel, and what’s happening outside work that day too.

The point is to get you to consider what you’d like your day to look and feel like. So rather than just happen to you, you take control of your work life, and actually manifest the one you want.

When you have thought about these questions, write down your perfect day, and consider how you feel about it. How does it differ from your reality now? You may find that actually, your average work day is already pretty perfect.

In which case, that’s fantastic. You can learn to appreciate what you have – and ensure that you don’t make changes that could lead to unhappiness.

Or you may find that actually your perfect day bears no resemblance at all to your life now. In which case, what changes can you make to bring you closer to it? Some may be easy and immediate, while others will require greater planning and work. The important thing is that you have a clear idea of what you want to work towards.

Create a vision for your business

The second important thing you need to do, if you haven’t already, is create a vision for your business.

What type of business do you want to run, not just now but in the short and medium term future? Being clear on your goals (and uncovering your unconscious ambitions) will help you to shape a business that fulfils your needs and brings you personal and professional satisfaction.

To help you create a vision for your business, consider these questions:

  • What would you like your business to look like in one year?
  • And in five years?
  • What type of people do you want to work with?
  • What type of customer or client do you want to attract?
  • What are your main products or services?
  • How much money do you want to earn this year?
  • And in five years’ time?
  • How many customers or accounts do you want to acquire?
  • What do you want to be recognised for?
  • Do you want to win any awards? Is so, which ones?
  • How do you want to feel about your business in one year?
  • And in five years?
  • What three words best describe your business?

Bring your vision to life

If you want to take these exercises one step further, you could create a vision or dream board. This can be physical – go through newspapers, magazines and brochures to find pictures that reflect your vision and pin them to a board or stick them in a scrapbook.

Or you could create a vision Pinterest board and seek out photos that bring your vision to life for you.

Then, whenever you feel in need of motivation, or you need to lift your mood, you can revisit your vision beard, and remind yourself what you’re doing and why – and what you’re working towards.

Keeping these visions firmly front of mind also makes it easier to make decisions. If a new client approaches you who doesn’t fit your vision, you’ll find it easier to recognise they’re not someone you want to work with and say ‘no’.

Let your mind create the life you want

There’s one last, powerful exercise you can practise with your perfect day and business vision.

Every day, try to find some quiet time (I find this easiest in bed at night as I’m dropping off to sleep) to play a ‘video’ in your mind of your perfect day, running your perfect business.

Play this video over and over, noting how you look, feel, what you hear, what you say, what you do, how others respond to you etc. Make it vivid and multi-sensory – laying down a clear, positive vision in your mind of what you want to happen.

Why do this?

All too often, we spend our mental downtime worrying. Our thoughts dwell on things we fear happening, or ruminate over bad things that have already happened.

And not only does this leave us feeling pretty despondent, but it tells your mind that these are the important thoughts, so they’re the ones it keeps.

As this brilliant article by Judah Pollock and Olivia Fox Cabane explains:

“It’s the synaptic connections you don’t use that get marked for recycling [when you sleep]. The ones you do use are the ones that get watered and oxygenated. So be mindful of what you’re thinking about.”

It’s also widely accepted that your thoughts create your reality – what you think about, you unconsciously manifest. So if you want to live the perfect life, and grow a business you love, start filling your thoughts with what that looks like, and let your mind help you achieve it.

Ready to design YOUR perfect business and day?

So are you ready to take control of your life – and design the business and lifestyle you want?

If so, why not set aside time in the week ahead – block it out in your diary now – and follow the exercises in this article? Get a clear vision of your perfect day, and make any changes you need to get closer to it.

Then set yourself some SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound) for your business. If you want to have a bit of fun, we recommend writing a few goals for six months’ time and sealing them in an envelope.

In six months’ time, open the envelope and see how many you reached! When we’ve done this, we’ve been really surprised at how many we achieved (even ones we’d forgotten we set!). Here are some ideas of goals you may want to set:

  • Profit goals.
  • Traffic goals for your website.
  • Media coverage goals.
  • Goals for number of customers.

Read more on planning a business you love

You’ll find plenty of brilliant advice on planning a business you love on our site. To help you find it, we’ve picked four of our favourites: