You Can’t Hit Goals When You Don’t See What You’re Aiming At
Thousands of small businesses fail every month due to a lack of vision. It isn’t that they haven’t had an economic epiphany or inspired apparition. They just don’t see right. Many have experienced rogue thoughts that fire the imagination of ideas and invention. Indeed, many businesses are conceived in such moments of passion. But revelation in and of itself is never enough for a successful start up to gain traction. A business owner needs to determine if they’re seeing the world as it really is; seeing their market in its reality is entirely a matter of focus.
It seems as you grow older, an annual eye exam is necessary to maintain correct vision, not only for reading, but also for viewing objects far away. It’s difficult to aim at the future, when it looks blurry from a distance. For most of us who need corrective lens, it’s virtually impossible to aim line of sight and hit the target without wearing our glasses or contacts. Lens crafting may be a science, but how the optometrist arrives at the prescription is more like trial and error. Even in the 21st century, the technology to establish your eye prescription is based on battery of questions dependent on the patient’s answer as they see it. But what if the patient’s wrong? Business surveys often are formatted in questions created to reveal if we understand the marketplace where we offer our products and services. Until you see clearly, you can’t hit your target goals. You just keep aiming at benchmarks and missing them. More than likely, you don’t have the right view and that’s why you keep missing the mark.
Working with the right focus can substantially increase your ability to see what you’re aiming at and hit it. At first, you may only be celebrating the fact you landed on the outer parameter of the target. But as you get use to using the right focus, you begin to hit the bull’s eye more often.
One day, there was a boy in the park shooting his BB gun at a target. He was frustrated because he couldn’t hit the target. A bystander watching him from afar suggested he move the target closer and much to the young man’s delight, he began hitting the target. The BB gun was just not powerful enough to hit the target at that distance. But the boy just couldn’t see it. Like many businesses, the target is so far out into the future, you can’t know if you’re hitting it. A CO2 cartridge rifle with metal BBs could have accomplished the original goal, but the boy could only afford the BB gun that shot plastic BBs. You have to adjust your target goals based on the tools you have at your disposal. Just remember, everyone using binoculars has to use the thumbscrew focus wheel to arrive at a sharpest view for the greatest clarity.
Syndicated financial columnist and talk show host Steve Savant interviews Jasmyn Nakata, co-business owner and entrepreneur on business planning strategies. Right on the Money is a weekly one-hour financial talk show for consumers.
