Looking ahead financially, it’s easy to say that your financial vision is simply being rich, but you have to dig deeper and figure out what it truly means to you.
Along with what work needs to be done to get you there and how you’re going to do it.
Within this blog, Co-founder and CFO, Jon is kindly sharing his top tips on how you can make your financial vision a reality! Take it away Jon.
Start with the end in mind
A good place to start is with the end in mind. Imagine yourself in your favourite place, maybe a nice restaurant in London, with your favourite people. Maybe you’re with the team you met on the Ignite Tech start up accelerator, five or ten years into the future.
You are perhaps eating your favourite food or drinking your favourite cocktail, life is good, in fact it’s amazing. You feel energised and happy, as after a long journey of ups and downs, twists, and turns you have finally arrived in your financial reality. It’s now time to tell the story of how you got to this place in your life, how you achieved the financial goals and objectives that you set all those years ago.
Back to the present
To get to the place you’ve just imagined, you must take a step back and look at the present. Think about what you want and need to do. Start setting some objectives.
Once you know where you want to take your life and business, it’s time to start working on how you’ll get there. Think of it like you’re making a cake – it’s time to start pulling the key ingredients together.
A few ingredients you’ll need/questions you should ask yourself are:
Who is your ideal client?
At the start of your business journey, you want to hear people saying yes. ‘Yes’ we want to buy from you, ‘yes’ we want to work with you, ‘yes’ we want to invest in you, and ‘yes’ we want to join the team. This is all great if it’s the right clients that are saying yes.
As you grow, you should expect to hear ‘no’ more frequently, and it’s important to remember that not everyone is the right fit for you and your business. To be selective about which customer you want to work with, your revenue model and pricing needs to be attractive, and your product needs to provide value to the right clients.
When you are working with your ideal client, growth becomes easier, as these clients share your passion. First though you need to explore what value the ideal client wants and how much they will pay to get it.
Who’s in your team or community?
All the people involved in your business need to like, know, and trust you. Customers, employees, and suppliers are all part of your hidden tribe of marketers. These business champions and advocates will help create your brand, grow your business, and ultimately reach your financial reality – so it’s important that you have the right people on board. Remember that you can’t do this alone, it’s important to build and grow relationships.
You need to figure out:
- What type of people you want to work with
- Who shares your values and passion for growing your business
Once you know who you want to work with, several questions need to be answered. How many employees do you need, what will they being doing, and when will you need them? How will you market the business, who will you market to, and how much will it cost?
Trust me when I say, these question all need to be answered, it’ll make it a lot easier to plan and shape your financial reality.
What’s your time frame and the potential cost?
Ask yourself how long your journey is going to take, along with how long you can afford for it to take. Be honest with yourself and remember, Rome was not built in a day.
If you know where you are going and how long it will take, it will be easier for you to identify when you have lost time. Which will enable you to evaluate whether you need to speed up, reset and/or regroup.
Having a clear vision and outline will also help you identify if you’ve over performed, and if you’re ahead of schedule. This will allow you to weigh up if you can afford to reward yourself for all the extra effort.
Once these three questions have been explored – it’s time to set off! Don’t wait, take immediate, intelligent, and co-ordinated action, so you can begin your journey whilst keeping focus and sight of your financial vision.
Remember to be consistent, and don’t get distracted by the many off-piste opportunities that will come your way. As an entrepreneur it may feel unnatural to be disciplined and focused, but it’s ok to be flexible, innovative, and to take risks, so long as you don’t lose sight of your vision.
Enjoy the journey and remember that a financial vision is an image of the future, backed up by numbers, that resonate with you.
Need help with your financial vision? Want to look ahead?
Feel free to get in touch, we work with many entrepreneurs at varying business stages. We’ve also been through the start up to scale up journey ourselves and are currently working hard to make our financial vision a reality!
