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Identify Your Vision

Hey, guys, Welcome back. Welcome back. You wanna know what today's goal is? Alright. Beautiful way are set. Okay, So today's goal is to set the destination for your business by identifying your vision. This session is all about defining success. Because to achieve success, you must define success and really focus looks really good on you. Focus is what we can achieve when we know where we're headed when we know what that destination is. And so that's what we're going to spend this whole session on. We're gonna start kind of at the top level with identifying your vision on. We're gonna bring it all the way down and start thinking about what individual metrics you should be paying attention, Thio. And then at the end, we're going to set a goal that will guide your business for the next 6 to 12 months. So let's review the seven key components of a standout business. First, businesses that stand out use their strengths. They're not trying to get better at their weakness. They're not trying...

. Thio work on those areas of opportunity that your boss used to tell you about. They leverage their strength. They also leverage their passion What they get really excited about what drives them. What motivates them. What really kind of ticks them off? They find their unfair advantage. They have a clear focus. They build their businesses on guiding principles. Those, uh, those ideas that are founded in our personal values. They share their vision and they speak with a unique voice. And we've started covering a lot of these things already. We're going to dive into a fume or so how does knowing your destination help you stand out? First of all, do you guys know where you're headed? Yeah. Okay. That was a good That was a really good response. Yeah, I got an idea. Yeah, that's what I hear a lot. Sure. I know. I know what I want for my business. I wanted to be successful. Oh, yeah? What does success look like to you? Because success isn't something that is, uh, the same for everyone. What I want is probably not what you want. What you want probably isn't what she wants. And so, you know, we really need to sit down and actually define what success is. Not just for ourselves, not just for our businesses, but for our customers as well, and for the mark that we want to leave on our industries on our fields. When you figure those things out, you can, you know, find the right path. I'm thinking about, you know, being in the uber this morning, and the uber driver knows where we're going, right, because on his little smartphone uber app, it shows him exactly what turns to make. What do you like to know exactly what turns to make in your business? This is why we have to define success if you don't have a crystal clear understanding of what the vision is for your business, about what your destination is about where your goal is to end up. You can't make all the right turns in your business. You can't plot out that course that's going to get you there Now Here's another thing. Having a clear vision gives you something to be known for when you communicate your vision to your customers, whether it's in, you know, a vision statement or whether it's just in the way you show up in your business every single day, you can be known for something and part of standing out is building that reputation off on having people understand why you're in business from in the first place. So having a clear vision gives you something to be known. For now, one business that has a very clear vision and something that they are very well known for is male chimp. And so now we're gonna go to a prerecorded interview case study that I did with Julie Gora, the brand manager for male chimp. And she's gonna tell us all about how male chimp uses their vision, their personal values, their guiding principles. Thio inform all aspects of their organization. So when I think of visionary companies, one of the ones that comes to mind is male chimp. They are fun, their irreverent and they've got a really crystal clear vision about what? About transforming email marketing from something you know, boring and disempowering to something that is accessible to all different kinds of businesses and fun and easy to put together. So I'd love to introduce Julie Gora, who's a brand manager at Mail Chimp who's going to tell us more about male chimp, their vision and how the values and vision of male chimp kind of goes through all sorts of different parts of their company because this isn't just a surface thing. This is a deep inside thing to write. So let's give a big round of applause to you. Julie Gora. Hey, Joy, Nice to meet you. Have a seat. Eso Let's just start off with that. What's male chimps vision for email marketing. So, as you probably know, male chimps to do it yourself email marketing service. So everything we do is to empower our customers and our users to send better email and help their businesses grow from the little guy all the way up to the enterprise company. We try to empower everyone to be able thio grow their business to where they wanted to be Awesome. I love using mail chimp for that very reason. Um, but I'm betting that male chip is probably a pretty fun place to work as well. At least on the outside, it looks like a pretty fun place to work. So what's something that mail chimp does or what are some things that mail chimp does to really foster that happiness for their employees? Um, well, growth, you know, making sure employees are able to grow how they want and work on projects that that that really engage them, make them happy. Um, all sorts of things. You know what you see outside all the creative fun things that you see those chimp pats, um, the vinyl toys, all that stuff. It's just imagine what it's like to work in a company that produces those, um uh, a really great place that you could go to kind of see what it's really like to work at mail. Chimp is our founder and CEO Ben Chestnut. Did a creative mornings chat. Um, you could just search for it on the Internet at the u. R. L is not pretty. Um, that's it. But if you look up Ben Chestnut creative mornings, um, talk. It's a quick 20 minute talk about what it's like to run a creative company, and it gives really good insight on kind of what it's like to work at mail chimp and how he runs the company and why everyone just let's going to work every day. Wonderful. Yeah, that's all right. Having a place that you love going to work every day. Um, so male chimp to me, is a really customer centric, uh, company. I feel like I am very loved as a a zey customer of male chimp eso. What do you guys do to make sure that you're keeping your customers really the center of everything? Yeah. So our customers are very, very important to us. Obviously, it should be for any business. Um, but we really listen to our customer. We go out and we meet people. I'm a brand manager. I goto events. I meet people that are running All sorts of businesses have questions about male chimp. We interview people about how they use it. We take feedback, we and we take that feedback and we make products and we make new features specifically based on customer feedback. Um, you'll see it in everything we do. We write block posts about our customers to show, um, examples of really great people that are using mail chimp to grow their business. And we send you Jim Pats and we on. We hide little things like, um, high fives every time you send your newsletter and little games that you might not know about our paper craft Freddie's that you can build that when people find them they just get so excited and they tweet about it. And several people have said they've almost broken their computer by trying to high five that little Kim Pan. Andi, that's just to delight our customers. Yeah, absolutely. I see you guys kind of putting that thread of surprise and delight everywhere. Anytime there's something new, I get so excited s o e eso. We've talked a little bit about the vision for male chimp, and I see the vision kind of really informing the philosophy behind the marketing that you guys do, how you go out and get new customers or how you make people more aware of the brand. So what's male chimps Philosophy for marketing and outreach? Everything already said, empowering, empowering the underdog but also empowering anybody. Um, creativity is really important to us, so we we kind of advertise like a B two c company would, even though would be to be company we want. You know, sending news letters isn't really fun, so I put a little bit of fun and creativity into what might be a boring task that you have at your job and delight our customers when they see a winking Freddie out in the wild or, ah, friend wearing a chimp at that, They they recognize that that's mail chimp or, you know, advertising on cereal. Now, everyone here's male camp and maybe didn't know what Milton was before, But now they're kind of in on that joke in, um, So, yeah, just delighting the customer is kind of our number one priority, and then they'll go back and think I need to send a newsletter. Male chimps. What I should use. Yeah, absolutely. I love what you said about. Even though we're a B two b company, we market like a B two c company because your customers might be businesses, But the person sending an email is always a person. And it is so clear that you guys see individuals and not just, you know, business bank accounts on. I love that so much. That's why I love you guys so much. So, Julie, thank you so much for sharing the vision and the philosophy behind mail chimp and all the ways that it really works through your organization. Thanks for having Thanks. We give Julie around the clock. All right, we're back. So that was a really great conversation with Julie and mail. Chimp just continues to be one of those businesses that really, really stands out to me. And their vision is a big part of that. So where do you want your business to be? years from now. Where do you want your business to be? 10 years from now. Where do you see it? Do you see it? As do you see? You know, just showing up to your home office, doing the work day in, day out. If so, that is a fantastic vision. Beautiful. Do you see a bunch of franchises all over the country? Great vision. Do you see having a team working with you co creating with you collaborating with you? Are they in your office? Are they outside of your office? Do you have a brick and mortar location? You have an office outside of your home. What's your vision for? Where your business is going to be in 10 years. How do you wanna be creating value 10 years from now? How do you wanna be delivering that value? 10 years from now on? What do you wanna be exchanging that value for 10 years from now? Here's a question we don't ask ourselves nearly often enough. Where do you want your customers to be 10 years from now? Where do you want your customers to be? 10 years from now, What transformation do you want to have catalyzed in their lives in their work? That changes them day by day, month by month, year by year, so that they're in a very different place 10 years from now than they are right now. And then finally, what impact do you wanna have on the conversation your businesses participating in 10 years from now? What impact do you wanna have in the market 10 years from now? Do you want thio change the conversation? Do you want to throw out a question that no one's asked before? You wanna throw out an answer that no one's come up with before? Do you want to create a solution that changes the game in your industry? What impact do you wanna have on the conversation? Your business participates in 10 years from now? So community a communicating a clear vision helps your prospects know what to pay attention. Thio and helps your business cut through the noise. Having that clear vision means that you're always on message. You're always on target. You're always super focused. And when you're on target on message and super focused, your customers know what to pay attention, Thio. Even though all that noise is happening all around them, you are signal because they've identified that the vision that you have for them is the vision that they have for themselves. The vision you have for them is the vision they have for themselves. And the other good news about that too, is that if someone doesn't have that vision, if the vision you have isn't their vision for themselves, that just means they're not your customer. And being able to say that Oh, you don't want You don't want to go to creative live When you get in the uber car, you wanna go Thio? Zynga? Oh, it's around the street. I don't know how to get there from here, either, but, um, you wanna go someplace else? Great. This is not the car for you. All right, so, understanding that vision, being able to communicate it and remember show don't tell, Although a vision statement could be a very powerful thing as well show. Don't tell, uh, knowing that vision allows your customers to say Yep, This is the car for me. This is the service for me. This is the product for me. So vision, your vision is part of your standout style. So as we build these standout style guides for your business is this is a key piece. This is a piece that keeps you on track that keeps your guiding principles clear, that keeps your execution. The metrics that you're paying attention to the actions that you take on a daily basis keeps them focused. And focus doesn't just change the way you work. Focus changes the way others perceive you and your business so that you can have that reputation that you want so that you can be known for what you want.