Why You Need A Vision For Your Life Before A Vision For Your Business

Did you start your business based on a passion, or as a way to create a life of freedom? Perhaps it was a little bit of both.

The amazing thing about the online space is that you can combine the two. Leverage your passion to create that life of freedom (whatever that looks like for you).

It’s a beautiful thing!

The problem that I see many entrepreneurs running into though is that they have a vision for their business and a plan to achieve it, but they don’t always have a clear vision for their life.

So their trajectory ends up looking something like this:

They achieve the success they had hoped for in their business but the way in which their business supports this success is not in line with the type of life they ultimately want to live.

For example...

...Imagine that you grew a really successful coaching practice and you were consistently booking it out with high paying clients. This was bringing in the income you hoped for and you love your work. However, your dream life includes working only 3 days a week so you and your partner can take long weekend getaways every week and explore all the national parks in your state. The problem you’re faced with is that coaching clients is time consuming. If you cut your hours down to only 3 days per week you’re also drastically cutting your income which means you can no longer financially support a 3-day workweek, 4-day getaway lifestyle.

When you have a vision for your business and start planning and taking action to get there, you achieve success but often your dream life, or vision for your life, ends up just slightly out of reach.

This is why your vision for your life should always come before your vision for your business.

...Maybe you dream of living on a tiny island soaking up the sun and enjoying the privacy and tight-knit community. But you built your business around your love of helping people, so you’ve got a totally successful business running in-person retreats and group workshops. To fit your business into your dream life on that tiny island you end up flying to your previous location so that your retreats are more accessible to your clients, both location-wise and financially. And you’re running client calls at 2am in the morning to accommodate your clients who are now in a completely different timezone.

These are exaggerated examples but they illustrate my point clearly.

Your vision for your business needs to be influenced by your vision for your dream life. Knowing your ultimate destination allows you to make tiny tweaks along the way to ensure that business success leads directly towards the fulfillment of your dream life.

Now, that’s not to say that everything will be perfect immediately. Sometimes you need to work in less than ideal circumstances for a while as part of your journey towards your best life. What I am saying is that you need to keep your eyes on your destination and make sure that every step you take along the way is ultimately leading you and your business in the right direction.

So, what does your dream life look like? Maybe it’s time you hashed out the details.

Don’t waste any more time on a trajectory that is not moving you towards the life you ultimately want to live. You work hard enough already :)

Wishing you clarity and momentum,

Michelle xxx