Casting a Vision

This is The Momentum Podcast.

One of the most challenging places to be as an entrepreneur is when you know exactly where you're going, when you can see it clearly, but when you also have a hard time communicating it to those around you. This can lead to miscommunication, frustration, and ultimately, a loss of productivity. When we take time to cast a vision and share our future with the people who are helping us, we can start to make progress at a rate that we didn't even know was possible. In this episode of The Momentum Podcast, Alex is going to show you exactly how to do that. I hope you enjoy.

I'm Alex Charfen and this is The Momentum Podcast, made for empire builders, game-changers, trailblazers shot takers, record breakers, world makers, and creators of all kinds, those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will.

We don't accept our destiny, we define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop, and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future. And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real.

We are the evolutionary hunters. Clearly, the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution, and we always will be.

I'm excited to share this concept with you called casting a vision. Now, casting a vision is not to be mistaken with your company mission or what we call the client centric mission. For us, a client centric mission is a simple four step statement, who do you help? How do you help them? What's the change you're going to make? And how will you know you're successful? For our company, that is, we help visionary entrepreneurs by giving them the frameworks, the systems and structure they need to grow their businesses. The change we want to make is that any entrepreneur who has a valid idea can grow a team and build an empire, and we will know we're successful when we're helping entrepreneurs around the world change the world.

And so, this is a little bit different than that, the client centric mission. See, casting a vision is a concept that we've shared for years with entrepreneurs, and here's why. There's this phenomena with entrepreneurs like you and I, that we have this clear vision of where we're going in our head, and on a daily basis, that vision gets clearer. It gets easier to see. It gets more attractive, more compelling, and we want to get there as fast as we can. And we create, we generate that vision. We develop that vision. We think about it. We put time into it when we're on our own and we're not communicating with anybody, and we fully and totally expect it to become real.

But here's the issue for so many entrepreneurs, we have trouble communicating that vision. We don't actually share it with the people around us. We don't tell them what's going on. And when it comes to having a vision for anything in your business, when you're not sharing it with the people around you, it's very unlikely that they're going to help you achieve it.

And so here's why casting a vision is so important. Casting a vision simply means sharing what's in your head and telling the people around you what's going on for you and what you want and what you really want to do so that you can get there faster. And you can cast a position in different ways. Sorry, you can cast a vision in different ways. You can cast a vision for a position. As an example, when we hire somebody in member services, that is, an entry level position, we don't ever want them to think of themselves as entry level. We want them to think... And here's how we cast a vision for the position of member services. We will tell somebody, "Member services are our frontline and you are the first impression that you give our members. You make or break our relationship with our members. That's how important this position is." So we immediately make them feel like that position's important.

When you cast a position for a department, you might be talking to like my coaching team. What I tell my coaching team is they're responsible for our member education. They're responsible for making sure our members are moving forward. They're responsible for making sure that our members are succeeding. In fact, we have a core value called success through the success of others. So when we cast a vision for coaching, that's what we tell them. And you can even cast a vision for a project. Like recently, we had a major project to take our Facebook groups and get them off of Facebook and onto a forum site where we could have people come and engage with each other, with our members, without the distraction of being on Facebook. That was a massive project. And when I first started casting a vision for the project, here's what I said. I said I want the functionality and usability of Facebook without any of the distraction of Facebook. I want us to build that off of that platform. I want our members to have a destination where they can come, they can focus on their business. They won't be distracted. They don't have to deal with ads, and they can be excited every time they come in.

Because when I was telling our members to go to Facebook to interact with us, I felt bad because I'm sending them into the land of distraction and confusion. And so I cast a vision for that project, and now we've gone from Facebook groups to an online forum that's not on Facebook, which is absolutely amazing.

Now you can even cast a vision for your business, and this might be the most important one. In our program, we show people how to have culture meetings. We show people how to get together with their team and tell them what's going on. And one of the most important things that you do in a culture meeting is give the history of your business, where you've come from, the conflicts you went through to start it, and then show them where you're going, but also... Not show them where you're going, but show them how you overcame them and how you got to where you are now, and then in addition, casting a vision for where the business is going. And when I share it with my team where I want our business to go today, I share with them that simply we want to be the largest information-product company in the history of entrepreneurship. We want to help more entrepreneurs build teams, build companies and build empires than anybody ever has. We want to be known globally for having the process, structure and routine that helps entrepreneurs predictably grow businesses. And I want our products, our systems, our structures, to be translated into different languages, to be disseminated around the world, to be able to help any entrepreneur who raises their hand and says, "I want to make things better. I want to make this world a better place. I want to change the status quo. I want to change the world. I want to build an empire." We want to be there for them.

That's how I cast a vision for my business. And as entrepreneurs, here's what I think happens to us far too often. We stay up here instead of getting it out here where we can share with people what's really going on. We keep it in our head instead of speaking out loud what's happening and where we really want to go.

So casting a vision is not that difficult. It's basically sitting down, getting centered on what you want out of a position, somebody that you're hiring, somebody on the team, out of a department, the group of people that is working on your team, out of a project that you are launching into on your team. What's the before? How do you want the after to look? What's all of the things that you have in your head? Give it to your team so they understand what they're aiming at. And even for the company, when you cast a vision and share with them what you really want out of the business, where you really want it to go, they will be able to join you, help you, support you and give you the protection and support you need.

Here's what we've seen in the past 27 years of working with entrepreneurs. When we don't cast a vision, we are almost always disappointed with our team. And I just want to let that sink in. Here's why. As entrepreneurs, when we're walking around with this amazing future in our head, when we're walking around with this excitement, this need to pursue this future, to go after it, to make it happen, to get there as fast as we can, and we don't share it with anybody else around us, here's what happens. We feel this excitement, this amazing feeling of this destination that we're creating, but the people around us don't feel that excitement. They don't feel that same feeling of wanting to go where we want to go. They don't have those same feelings because we haven't shared enough with them to give it to them.

And so what happens is when we cast a vision, when we share where we're really going, when we tell our team not just where we're going, but why we're going there and what we're going to accomplish and how we're going to change the world, we can get them just as excited as we are. And here's what happens when your team's excited, they show up the same way you do. If you've hired true believers, they're going to perform even more when they're excited, when they understand the destination.

Remember, to get somebody into momentum, you only need three things, and I've shared this on my podcast over and over again. You need a clear outcome. That's casting a vision, telling them where you're going. You need accountability. So they need to know what their role is and how they're playing a part. And they need a scoreboard. If you're not getting the acceleration you want, if you're not getting the growth you want, then let the people around you know where you're going, and they will match you in excitement. They will match you in commitment. They will match you in the effort to grow the business the way that you want to.

So if you're not getting the growth and acceleration you want, ask yourself, does your team, do the contractors, do the people around you really know where you're going? And if they don't, you can't expect them to help you get there. But if you cast a vision and give them clarity, and show them what's really happening, and show them why you're going there, you will increase their confidence, their clarity, and their commitment, and you will see your team join you and help you grow forward fast.

So when in doubt, cast a vision for your team. Let them know where you're going. Help them understand why you're so excited. Cast the vision for the position, for the department, for the project, and you will see your business grow. Remember, what's in our minds as entrepreneurs is not transparent to everybody around us, although we want it to be, and let's get real, sometimes feel like it should be. The better we do at casting a vision and sharing with our team where we really want to go, the faster we experienced the growth we want.

Thanks for being here and I appreciate you listening. And if you are ready to grow your business and move forward and understand how to put the right process, structure and routine in place, go to predictablebusinesssolutions.com and fill out a short application for my team and jump on a call with one of us. We would love to help you grow your business, grow a team, change the world and build your empire. Predictablebusinesssolutions.com.