Find Your Trail: Clarifying where you want to go
At Elevation Business Consulting, we are focused on helping small business owners stop scrambling through each day. The journey involves building a map to guide you towards success on your terms. The process starts with finding your trail so you can plan your course and then keep yourself moving forward on your trail.
You are invited to follow the journey of a small business owner eager to end the daily chaos and spend more time doing what he does best to expand his impact on his local community. By studying Travis from Hunchback Graphics’ experience, you will be better positioned to start your journey to end the daily scramble. Previously, Travis took the first step as he articulated his current state. Now he moves into clarifying where he wants to go.
Find Your Trail: Clarifying where you want to go
Travis has dreams and ideas and is constantly identifying new opportunities to use his creativity. Sometimes the projects require his graphic design skills and other times he gets to leverage other artistic talents. Travis is busy but is not sure if he is going in the right direction to achieve his personal needs, goals, and desires. Early in the engagement with Elevation Business Consulting, he spent time clarifying where he wants to go to allow him to create a more focused roadmap for Hunchback Graphics.
The Struggle
In addition to supporting clients with all their graphic design and branding needs, Travis is also involved in many community projects, from murals around town, to creating a weekly podcast and generating printed apparel for local shops to sell. There are many different avenues he is using his creative skills that he enjoys but it limits the time he has available to grow Hunchback Graphics’ impact. Travis felt stretched thin and felt that how he was running Hunchback Graphics may not provide the right opportunity to achieve his personal needs, goals, and desires. He enjoyed all the creative outlets but questioned if they were supporting him or preventing him from getting where he wanted to go.
Taking action
There are three elements of identifying where you are going. Your needs, goals, and desires. Travis needed to spend time exploring and clearly articulating his personal needs, goals, and desires. Once he had clarified where he wanted to go, he could tie the creative opportunities and the strategic direction of his business to moving himself closer to his destination.
As Travis worked closely with Elevation Business Consulting, he walked through the three areas and brainstormed what was keeping him motivated to build his business. He was able to zero in on what he wanted to achieve in each area.
Needs from owning the business
Travis wants to sustain his lifestyle but is not willing to work crazy hours to pull it off. He needs to maintain harmony between his work life and his fun personal activities. Recognizing that the fun, creative components will oftentimes bleed into Hunchback Graphics’ time and resources, he needs to ensure the creative components will create value to his and the business’ brand and reputation.
Goals in owning the business
As Travis evaluated his goals in owning and running the business, he knew that a big goal was to have a collaborative environment to use his creativity. His energy is always highest and most productive when he gets to feed off others enthusiasm and ideas. Knowing that he thrives when he is interacting with others, he has the personal goal of making enough progress on building Hunchback Graphics to sustain his business partner fulltime. Once he is benefiting from the collaborative energy of a working together, he wants to move towards creating a team of diverse, creative talents to support client work but also expand his opportunities to design.
Desires from owning the business
Travis’ dream is to make a visible impact on the community. He can tie the many activities and outlets he pursues as opportunities to give back to the county and enhance the reputation of the businesses and causes within the region. He aspires to have the capacity to do more philanthropically and provide services and support to organizations that are meaningful for him. Travis knows that Hunchback Graphics is the vessel that will allow him to achieve his desire to elevate the county and community and everything that makes his hometown great.
Success on your terms
Once Travis had spent the time articulating where he wanted to go, he was able to assess the many activities he was currently engaged with, and new opportunities based on how they aligned with his needs, goals, and desires. He started planning to transition out of activities that did not align and identifying areas in which he needed engage more or better promote. Having clarity on where he was going guided his decision making not only for creative activities, but also on how he supports clients for Hunchback Graphics.
Stay tuned for the next step in Finding Your Trail: Evaluate your daily activities.