Operating Your Business with Clarity: It’s Achievable!

Most business owners aim high, shoot for the stars and, even if they miss, still land beyond the stratosphere. Getting to that point where they feel ready to blast off on their endeavour takes a great deal of innovation and drive. You need clarity that lets you see which path to follow–and this is something plenty of business owners don’t take into consideration.

You run the risk of muddling your thoughts if your mindset doesn’t align with what you’re doing and what you’re aiming for, leading to unclear expectations and goals.

When I was at a crossroads with my custom cycling wear business, my thoughts were scattered and disorganised. I was losing money, I was in debt and it felt like I had no way around the overwhelming situation I was in. I could no longer see a path in front of me and I felt like I couldn’t work around the struggles I was facing.

As I was cycling to clear my mind, I stopped at a junction, which I felt was symbolic of my current situation. It was here that I realised I had two options:

• Return to work for someone else, to achieve their goals and follow their rigid schedule; or
• Pick myself up, overcome the challenges I was facing and create a destiny that aligned with my purpose and motivations.

Naturally, I journeyed towards the path that promised freedom and innovation and I emerged from it victorious, later selling my business after bouncing back exponentially–all because I was able to harness the clarity that I worked hard to achieve, devising a strategy to get from point A to point B.

That’s how I learnt that you need to have a well-thought-out strategy in order to have clarity. That clarity helps you align your goals and better pave the way for business freedom and results.

What is clarity in business?

Business clarity is not just about being able to communicate your vision, it’s also about how comprehensible that vision is for you and your team. It means having a clear picture of what you want, getting everyone on the same page and being able to answer any questions about your goals and what you will do to get there.

You must see the importance of clarity, and to do that, you need to start with the correct, positive mindset. Being intentional with your own thoughts and actions will help you feel fulfilled and jumpstart your growth, allowing you to start smashing out your goals.

You need to be fully aligned–from your personal to professional life. This is not to say that you need to make your business your life 24/7, but that the way you handle your personal life must mirror how you treat your business: With care, determination and hard work. How you act at home will translate to the office, and if you keep moving towards bettering yourself in both aspects, you’re going to start feeling like moving forward is natural.

Ask yourself: Where am I going? What am I willing to do to get there? It’s important to establish a strategy so that you can reach your goals.

Focusing on the positive and how you and your business will move forward matters more than putting out fires and being issue-focused. Constantly jumping from problem to problem without thinking about how you can push the envelope will turn into stagnation and prevent you from evolving. You want to see each solution as a step in the right direction rather than just fixing something that went wrong.

A positive mindset combined with a healthy work-life balance and a clear business strategy will help you build purpose-driven and actionable clarity.

Why finding clarity in business can be challenging

With so much information and advice from different business coaches (who, let’s face it, don’t always have the experience to back up what they’re saying), it can be difficult to pinpoint what is useful to you and what’s just fluff that will confuse you along the way.

Figuring out what applies to your business can be frustrating because some strategies or solutions may not be the answer to the problems you’re facing. Advice from loved ones can be well-intentioned, but it isn’t always warranted. While problematic or irrelevant counsel will just cause problems with how you go about things.

It’s also difficult because you might not be able to align your personal life with your professional life. While it’s not a priority for many business owners, you need to make it one.

You need clarity in order to stop setting unrealistic goals and decisions that don’t align with the visions you have for yourself and your business. Having clarity ensures that you’re moving forward and setting actionable and positive expectations for yourself and your company.

Clarity comes first in every business interaction in order to be on the same wavelength as the rest of your team. Once you find it, you will be able to translate it to your staff and the execution of your processes as you move towards your goals.

Here’s how you can gain clarity in your business

Some questions you can ask yourself in order to gain clarity around your business are:

• Where do you want your business to be in a few years?
• What do you want to accomplish?
• What makes you, your product or service and your methods different?
• Who is your customer?
• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• What concrete things do you want to be doing every day to reach your goals?

You also need to decide which advice you want to take. There’s a lot of “noise” on the internet, so you need to choose what to listen to carefully. A great way to help you narrow down what you want to follow and focus on is to hire a business coach who has walked the walk and can give you actionable strategies that reflect their experience and will help you on your journey. Blocking out the noise that seems redundant or irrelevant will help you hone in on what you need to do.

You don’t want to make the mistake of ending up in pitfalls because you’re trying to take everyone’s advice into consideration. They may mean well, but they don’t all work for your business. You need to be discerning and critical about what you want to apply to your processes so you don’t feel scattered and, instead, will move forward armed with what kinds of tips and tricks you’ve learned from people who’ve been there, done that.

Asking yourself questions and whittling down the advice you need to take will help you move from the comfort zone to the growth zone. This necessary movement will bring you closer to what you want to achieve while ensuring that you don’t sacrifice what you’ve already worked hard on while securing balance and stability without stagnating.

Finding clarity in your business isn’t just about knowing what you want, but the whys and hows, as well. It can be difficult to aim at something so far-flung without a strategy to lift off and land–and if you’re inconsistent with your velocity in all things (whether professional or personal), you will slow down or stagnate along the way. Having clarity in your business is important, and one way to do this is to have a well-defined business model. A business model is a framework that describes how a business creates, delivers, and captures value. It is a blueprint for how a business will operate and make money.

A well-laid-out plan with clear goals, a positive mindset and a solid strategy can take you from point A to B with as little friction as possible. This is not to say that it’ll be smooth sailing all the time but to have your feet ready to pedal through any road bumps and the momentum to overcome them, you’ll be able to move past any setbacks and continue forward.

Learn more by visiting our business evolution circle page, where you can join a community of like-minded, motivated business owners.