to make it really big by creating search technology that would harness the chaos that was the early Internet. Ray Kroc saw the possibilities in a small hamburger franchise and grew the McDonald’s empire based on his vision of applying mass production concepts to a service industry (food preparation). And every day venture capitalists are presented with business plans from would-be entrepreneurs whose definitions of success go well beyond simply earning a decent living.
Visionary Ventures are the types of new companies that get a lot of press. They are exciting, innovative businesses that aspire to new heights and to break new ground. They are also risky. Since an entrepreneur creating a Visionary Venture wants to create a company with huge potential, the entrepreneur often has to put personal considerations—such as the business’ ability to generate current income or provide financial stability—second to the need to find a concept that can support the growth of a large enterprise.
Because Visionary Ventures inevitably involve finding and securing big markets—or developing new products or technologies—they typically require a great deal of money to get started. This means that the entrepreneur not only has to spend a lot of time seeking financing, but they also will probably have to give up a significant portion of the ownership of the company to investors.
business Buzz
words
“corporate culture”
At its most basic level, a corporate culture is made up of the aggregate attitudes, experiences, beliefs, and values of all employees at a business. According to Charles W.L. Hill and Gareth R. Jones in their book Strategic Management (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), corporate culture can be defined as “the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization.” A corporate culture can be one in which employees work very hard but also play hard. Or it could be one in which individual workers possess a great deal of autonomy – to the point where they don’t need to come into the office except for meetings or other special occasions. Some businesses attempt to formalize their corporate cultures by writing down their corporate “values”; in other cases, the culture is simply the spirit that infuses the organization more spontaneously.
Your Personal Vision
Visions differ from goals in that they tend to be large, grand, and encompass a broad range of factors. Goals tend to be the tangible, nuts-and-bolts accomplishments we set to fulfill our visions. When creating a business, you start at the very top with the personal vision, and gradually work your way down through business vision to opportunities to actual goals and milestones that you can check off a list. To better define your vision, you’ll need to:
■ Identify your passion. First, what are you passionate about? What truly interests you? What will keep you up at night, thinking and working, long after you should be asleep? This is your passion, and you should always pay attention to what you are passionate about. Aligning your vocation (how you earn your living) with your avocation (how you prefer to spend your time) is one of the most satisfying things you can do. In many cases, it’s the reason entrepreneurs have become entrepreneurs.
■ Identify your skill sets in this field. Once you know what your avocation is, you need to decide how personally qualified you are to pursue it. You may have a passion for helping people in emotional difficulty and think you want to be a psychologist, counselor, or even a psychiatrist operating your own practice. But what are your inherent skills that make this an appropriate choice of profession for you? Are you naturally intuitive and insightful when it comes to understanding other people’s emotional states? Likewise, if you would like to head your own business consulting firm, what specific skills do you possess that would make this a good match? Do you have an analytical mind that can spot problems and come up with solutions? Do you have the people skills to convince people you have the answers to their questions? Taking a long, hard look at yourself is an essential first step in starting a business.
■ Assess your training/education. Once you’ve identified your inherent skills and talents, it’s time to investigate how well you’re prepared to go into this field based on your formal training and education. It may turn out that your native skills are enough to qualify you to jump into a profession with both feet—for example, dog grooming does not require a degree or certificate—but in many cases you will need to have a credential, academic or trade, or some sort of formal proof that you are qualified to do what you want to do.
■ Evaluate your experience. Likewise, experience often matters—sometimes even more than a formal education. In the software field, for example, someone’s innate programming abilities coupled with hands-on experience writing computer programs are often worth more than a degree from even the most prestigious university. As has been often noted, Bill Gates never graduated from Harvard. Instead, he took his talent for programming and his experience experimenting with computer languages to found his own software company, Microsoft. The rest is history.
■ Assess your lifestyle goals. How you want to live your life is a big part of your vision. Are you willing—or even eager—to devote 60 hours a week to your business? Or is your ultimate goal to leave the running of your day-to-day operations to someone else while you relax on your sailboat? Do you want to grow a business that employs hundreds of people, or do you want to remain an independent sole proprietor? Do you want to work out of your home, or do you wish to establish boundaries between your personal and professional lives by getting an outside office? The more you can articulate this aspect of your vision, the more prepared you will be later to identify the actual goals and milestones for judging whether you’re meeting them.
■ Identify your geographic preferences. Where would you like to live? Do you want to be able to travel extensively, and to run your business from wherever you happen to be? Or do you want to reside in a particular location? Technology is enabling people to run “virtual” companies that can be operated from anywhere, so depending on the specific type of business you hope to start, you may have a whole gamut of choices that were previously unavailable to entrepreneurs.
■ Articulate your financial dreams. Finally, there is the very important question of money: you may simply be hoping to get enough to support yourself (and your family) and save sufficiently for retirement. Or you may be more ambitious, and have visions of accumulating real wealth. Whatever your goals, it’s best to articulate them upfront as part of your vision so you can plan your business accordingly.
Your Business Vision
Once you’ve articulated your personal vision, it’s time to consider your business vision. This includes thinking about the type of company you want to build and run at a fairly high level. Some questions to consider:
■ How big a company do you want to build? As you begin to think about your business, keep in mind that the business itself may dictate the size. Some people deliberately keep their business vision small: they want to be sole proprietors and have no interest in employing others or growing a business that requires more than their particular input. Those with professional skills like accounting or business consulting often fall into this category. Big ideas often require big companies to make them come to fruition. It would be difficult to run a furniture manufacturer with mass-market reach with just three employees. A lot of this comes back to control. It’s hard to maintain a high degree of control over a larger company—although some people certainly try.
The Four Aspirations outlined on pages 14–15 provide a good yardstick for determining the size business you will run. If, for instance, you come to realize that your
