Visualising success might seem quite easy.

 

You might start with some of the outcomes of a successful business such as:

  • High earnings
  • Fancy car
  • Up market clothes, holidays etc

You might also consider the impact of your existence as a business:

 

  • Benefits to your customers and stakeholders
  • The personal joy if seeing things work well
  • Having great people want to work and collaborate with you
  • Creating life changing impact on clients, staff, the community
This list can go on and on.
Don’t forget to quantify as many elements as possible. This helps to make the vision realistic and avoid too much blue sky dreaming. You also need to think about your capabilities and those of your team. Unless you have the capabilities to achieve your vision it will just remain a dream – and likely end in failure.

 

One way to visualise success is to write a media story for a publication of your choice headlining the business in 3-5 years time:
  • Timescale 3-5 years in the future
  • Specify which publication and why
  • Back up the story with the key issues and elements
  • Describe the journey
  • How do you think you will feel at this point of time in the future?
You are writing a fiction of the future but work back from the publication date to identify the key milestones from your starting point. Don’t be afraid to be ambitious.

What about Failure?

 

Thinking about failure may seem a negative approach which will discourage you from even trying. But recognising and understanding failure is an important factor in avoiding it or at least minimising the impact.
Visualise failure requires you to recognise and confront your worst fears.
It’s based on a creative thinking technique called reversal or inverted.
Charlie Munger describes the technique which he developed as a young weather forecaster in the US Air force and applied it to all his business decisions – it might surprise you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5-re2X-YSY
Munger was Warren Buffet’s partner for a very long time and helped to build Berkshire Hathaway group – the most successful investment business of all time.
For a start-up business failure will have different elements depending on your situation but here are some common elements to get you started:
  • Not finding enough customers to buy your product or service at a realistic price (ie profitable)
  • Not managing costs effectively (lack of proper control systems)
  • Low customer conversion rate (low return on marketing effort and spend)
  • Insufficient funding to maintain the business through to break even
  • Running out of cash
  • Not paying bills when due (tax can be a particular risk)
  • Hiring the wrong people
  • Using unreliable suppliers and sub-contractors
Again, the list can go on and on.
Now take your visualisation of failure and invert it. This will give you a much clearer picture of what you need to do to avoid failure – in other words to succeed.