Strong lives are motivated by dynamic purposes. — Kenneth Hildebrand

Your vision will inspire others

Defining your values will naturally lead you to a vision for your company. The vision can be what you aim for the business to be, both now and in the future. For example, you might determine your company vision as follows:

“My business aims to be the leading soap-maker in the region that guarantees 100% customer satisfaction while maintaining the highest standards of environmental protection in the making of our products.”

The vision you create will ultimately depend on the values you choose. So, have some fun imagining the possibilities of the future you will create.

Having a vision for your company is not only motivational and inspirational for you but others as well. If you have staff (or helpful supportive family and friends for free labor), a vision that everyone understands can help keep energy, and enthusiasm, high. Likewise, with customers and suppliers, a vision statement can persuade and enhance company reputation. By sharing your vision with them, you also help them to feel like they’re part of your company too.

So, while your business plan is your base, the values and vision you add to it are like the special mix of colors and fragrances you add to your soaps to give them their unique characteristics. They help to guide you through the tough decisions as your business grows. Formulating them is as easy as throwing on your ‘creative cap’ and deciding which things, or values, are most important to you! Once you’ve got them all stirring in your pot (business plan, values and vision), it’s time to select a specific shape and pour your mold – and we’ll come to this tomorrow.

Your homework for tonight is to read through your lists of possible values and vision statements from yesterday. Go through your value statements and rank them in order of importance and fit. Pick your top five and wordsmith them until they sound coherent. Go through your ideas for a vision and rank your top three. Which one fits best with your top five value statements? Choose that for your vision. Write or type it up and post someplace visible so you can see your values and vision and refer to them daily.

Looking for another part in the “Kickstart Your Business” series?

Part 1 – Defining Your Business

Part 2 –  A Simple Plan

Part 3 – A SWOT

Part 4 – Defining Values

Part 6 –  Breaking Down Goals 

Part 7 – Put Your Goals To Action

Part 8 – Surround Yourself Well 

Part 9 – Endless Possibilities

Defining your values is important

While business is, of course, about money, it’s about other things too. Business is also about your values and the vision you create for your company, both now, and in the future. Defining these values and vision – what your company stands for – is where a lot of the fun comes in!

For the first ten years at Bramble Berry, our mission (or vision) was to be the best at customer service in our industry. In everything we did, this is what we were striving for. Now, we’re updating that a bit as we continue to grow and build on our positive foundations. We want our new vision to move towards the idea of providing opportunities to change lives. We’re still working on the exact wording but the idea of providing women and men all over the world the opportunity to have a great part time or full time business using our supplies is powerful.

Initially, it took us nearly three years to decide which values we wanted for Bramble Berry. And going through this was not always an easy process. At one point, we had pages and pages of potential value statements. We even once had a value that said ‘profitability will never be our ultimate goal.’ But it turned out, that a value statement like that just wasn’t very practical (remember how we ran out of money? That’s easy to do when you say that you don’t care if you want to be profitable!). After much winnowing, discussions and trial periods, we were able to define the values for our company.

Today, Bramble Berry’s core values are as follows:

(1.) To be an industry leader

(2.) To stand behind our quality products

(3.) To show L.O.V.E. to our customers and employees (L.O.V.E. stands for: changing Lives (the L), creating Opportunities (the O), delivering high Value (the V), and encouraging creative Expression through the five senses (the E).

(4.) To be socially responsible

(5.) To recognize that profitability equals opportunity

These values are important because they stand as the benchmark against which we measure our actions. Every decision we make goes through these filters.

For example, when we’re thinking about whether or not to bring on a new line, we have to ask ourselves, “Does this line meet the standards outlined in our values?” If the line is a sub-par product, then our answer has to be “no”. Because of our core values, we have also decided not to carry Indian Sandalwood essential oil, despite its popularity. Sandalwood’s endangered species status doesn’t match up with how we’ve stated that we want to run the business. Every single decision we make as a company can be run through our values filter. Often times, I’ll look at a project that is labor and time intensive (like the painted Christmas soap ornaments) and say, “Yes, that will cost me a full weekend to design, make, photograph, write and upload but it’s in keeping with our value to be an industry leader and to show L.O.V.E. to our customers, so I’ll do it.” These are just a couple examples but I hope they help you see why it’s important to develop a set of core principles that lead you down the path of business success that you can be proud of.

Choosing values for your own company can be lots of fun. You start by asking yourself, “What do I stand for?”

• Maybe you stand for 150% customer satisfaction.
• Maybe you stand for providing living wage jobs in your community.
  
• Maybe you stand for fast product delivery 24/7.
• Maybe you stand for protecting the environment.
• Maybe you stand for supporting women business partners in your community.

The reason I say this is a fun part of the business growing process is that you can stand for anything you want! Be as creative as you’d like! Eventually, you choose 4-5 values that are most important to you, and then integrate them into your business practices. Developing core values can help guide you through the many business decisions that will come your way and they will help to ensure that you’re building a company you can be proud of.

Your homework today is to come up with a brainstorming list of to start your journey towards a vision statement that fits you and your business (Why are you here? What do you want to do that is different? What impact do you want to have on your local or global world?). I want you to also brainstorm a list of potential value statements. Just three or four pages of chicken scratchings, scribblings and a stream-of-consciousness thought is all you need to come up with. You don’t need to put them in order, rank them or anything. Simply sit in a quiet place and spend 30 minutes listing out anything and everything that comes to mind.

Next up: We’ll look at how you can inspire others through your vision and values.

Looking for another part in the “Kickstart Your Business” series?

Part 1 – Defining Your Business

Part 2 –  A Simple Plan

Part 3 – A SWOT

Part 5 –  Using Your Vision To Inspire 

Part 6 –  Breaking Down Goals 

Part 7 – Put Your Goals To Action

Part 8 – Surround Yourself Well 

Part 9 – Endless Possibilities

Working out a simple business plan

The longer, detailed variety of business plans generally document your industry and overview the market, analyze competitors in the field, draw-up plans for marketing and management structures, describe operational plans of facilities and equipment, and thoroughly analyze financial requirements for running the business and generating profits. They cover a lot! But, we’re not going to work on these types of detailed business plans (though some of you might, at some point, need to do one if you decide to pursue a bank loan or line of credit for company expansion). For now, we’re going to cherry-pick some of the most useful, and relevant, parts for putting together a simpler, and easy-to-do version.

To generate a plan for your business, you’ll want to spend a little time researching and exploring the soapmaking industry. You can do this through magazines or even by doing a bit of online research. Good places to start are soapmaking forums such as http://soapdishforum.com/ or http://www.teachsoap.com/forum/ or some of the YahooGroups for soapmaking. You could also extend your reading to the health and beauty industries in general. Reading up on these industries will give you good insights on the latest trends. And having this kind of knowledge will certainly help you make better business decisions overall. If you’ve been in the soap world for a little while, you probably took care of this step without even realizing that getting a good background knowledge was important for your plan.

The next part of the plan involves figuring out your customers. Who are your customers? And, who are the customers you would like to sell to? If, right now, you’re selling to people at farmers’ markets and craft fairs, ask yourself: “Who is attending these markets and fairs?” And, then take notice of who is coming into your booth and making purchases. Are they women? Are they mothers? Are they groups of friends? Once you figure out these questions, you can start to make product offerings that appeal to these specific types of customers.

For example, if you find that many of your customers are mothers, you can create soaps that are fun for children. Since mothers are always looking out for fun products that kids like and have entertainment value (i.e. cute animal or hidden-object type soaps), you can make soaps that meet this need. It’s important to drill down to as much detail as you possibly can. Is that same mother wearing Birkinstocks or the latest Manolo Blahnik? Does she dye her hair? Is she carrying her baby in a sling or pushing the baby in an $1000 Stokke Xplory stroller. You probably shouldn’t be designing hemp soap with patchouli essential oil for the Manolo Blahnik–wearin‘, $1000 stroller-rollin‘ mom. When you find unique ways to meet your customers’ needs, you increase the likelihood of making sales to them. Being clear on who your customers are will help you to do this.

When creating your plan, you’ll also need to know who your competitors are. You’ll need to think about what exactly they offer. Understanding your competitors will lead you to your own unique value proposition. This is the unique offering that you bring to your customers that your competitors cannot. It’s what gives them value. And it’s how that offering positions you in relation to your competitors.

At a farmer’s market, there are only so many people actually in the market to purchase soap. If they can choose between your soap, and the soaps of a competitor a few booths down, what is it that will make them choose your soaps instead of your competitor’s products? Is it quality? Is it variety? Is it price? Think about the advantages your product offers as well as the advantages your competitors offer.

A word of caution: it’s tempting to consider everyone your “competitor” and want to go all draconian and drive them out of the marketplace.This is one way of doing business but I don’t think it’s a healthy way of doing business. I prefer to think of other people selling soapmaking supplies on the internet as “fellow suppliers” rather than “competitors”. The two terms mean the same thing but the feeling bethind them is vastly different. It doesn’t mean I don’t pay attention to them or try and figure out a niche they don’t have. I still do that. But, I do so in a spirit of trying to improve our company and hopefully, the entire industry.

At Bramble Berry, our unique value proposition used to be that we got almost all our orders out within 1 business day of the order being placed. Then, a few other fellow vendors started doing that. So, that unique value proposition started becoming more of a tablestake. So, now our unique value proposition is in trying to improve the customer experience. It’s something we want to be better at than our competitors. And so, we’re working really hard to give our customers lots of different ways to talk to us such as through blogs (this one and me visiting as many of yours as I can), soap forums, Twitter, Facebook, soap making weekends, and by giving talks at regional and national gatherings. We believe that by doing this, we give ourselves an edge over our fellow suppliers.

Tonight’s homework is to identify your current customer and identify your ideal customer, in writing. Write down as much detail as you can come up with about them (age, sex, income range, likes, dislikes, where they shop, what they drive, kids, professions – it all helps). It doesn’t have to look fancy. Just brain dump onto paper. At the end of this process, we’ll put it all together in a coherent format.

Tomorrow we’ll look at another feature of the business plan: how to evaluate your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Looking for another part in the “Kickstart Your Business” series?

Part 1 – Defining Your Business

Part 3 – A SWOT

Part 4 – Defining Values

Part 5 –  Using Your Vision To Inspire 

Part 6 –  Breaking Down Goals 

Part 7 – Put Your Goals To Action

Part 8 – Surround Yourself Well 

Part 9 – Endless Possibilities

Welcome to Day One in the “Kickstart your Business in 2009” series. Today, we’re going to discuss how to start on a simple business plan – a roadmap – for your business. What do you want your business to look like?

Just like soaps, businesses come in all different shapes and sizes. Soaps can be big or small, tiny or huge. They can smell fruity or fresh, spicy or sweet. They can be oily or dry, creamy or clear. They can be shaped as cats, dogs, birds, rectangles or squares. And they can be blue or green, yellow or orange, purple or pink – or even, purple-pink! As soapmakers, the form, color and characteristics you give to your soaps is entirely up to you.

Growing your new business can be a bit like this too. It can be big or small, general or specialized. It can be online or offline. It can have one employee or many. It can be local, regional, national – or even international! What it looks like is ultimately up to you! Today you might be selling in farmers’ markets. But what would you like to be doing tomorrow? What would you like to be doing this time next year? And, what would you like to see your business doing in five years time?

That’s exactly what we’re going to work on for the next few days. We’re going to look at some of the practical parts in planning for what comes next; how to grow your business. We’re going to look at some very simple tools you can start using immediately to move you from where you are today, to where you want to be tomorrow, next year, and in five years time. While doing this, I’ll also share some of the ways that I grew my own businesses, Bramble Berry, Otion and Organic Fusion.

At the most simplistic level, making a bar of melt and pour soap requires a couple of basic steps:

• First, you must cook (or melt) a base.
• Then, to make your bar unique, you add a special mix of ingredients.
• And finally, you must pour it all into a mold.

I’d like you to think about growing your business in a similar light:

• First, you’ll need to come up with a base. This base is a simple business plan. You’ll need this to create a solid foundation. It’s the basic building block that will enable you to thrive.
• Then, once you have your business plan ready and in-use, you’ll want to start thinking about what kinds of ‘special ingredients’ to add. By this I mean: what kind of unique values and vision do you want your company to have?
• And finally, you’ll want to set goals which, as they are achieved, help give shape to, and mold, the overall look of your business.

So, how do you get started with your base? How do you build a simple business plan? Luckily, it’s not nearly as hard as you might think. But it does require a bit of thinking, and getting those thoughts down on paper.

Your Homework for tonight is to visit or two soapmaking forums and spend at least 30 minutes browsing them to get a feel for the people and trends in the soap industry: http://www.teachsoap.com/forum and http://www.soapdishforum.com/

Check back tomorrow to get started on your business plan adventure.

Looking for another part in the “Kickstart Your Business” series?

Part 2 –  A Simple Plan

Part 3 – A SWOT

Part 4 – Defining Values

Part 5 –  Using Your Vision To Inspire 

Part 6 –  Breaking Down Goals 

Part 7 – Put Your Goals To Action

Part 8 – Surround Yourself Well 

Part 9 – Endless Possibilities

Thank you for your amazing goals. Over 95 of you commented, listed goals and came up with a great plan to move yourself ahead in 2009. If you’d like to see the inspiring goals others set, they’re spaced over three days of posts – here, here and here. Regina from Dr. Flowers Essentials, a long time supporter of this blog and Bramble Berry, was the comment that was randomly chosen by an online number generator to receive a goody packet for her participation.

Overwhelmingly, at least half of you had business goals. They ranged from getting new accounts, to doing new craft shows, to streamlining inventory to increasing consumer sales. I read your frequently and want this blog to be a reflection of the interests that you have.

Over the coming two weeks, I’ll be writing and posting a series on ‘growing your business’. This new series will show you how to plan for stable growth in 2009. It does require homework but if you’ve never sat down to truly map out your business and plan for success, this is the time to do it.

Join me over the next few weeks in exploring the foundations of a successful small business so that you and your business can shine in ’09!

———————————————————————————————–

Day One – What do you want your business to look like?

Day Two – Working out a simple business plan

Day Three – Evaluating your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats

Day Four – Defining your values is important

Day Five – Your vision will inspire others

Day Six – How to set goals

Day Seven – Getting your goals into action

Day Eight – Positive people can help you reach your goals

Day Nine – The possibilities are endless

Today and tomorrow are a great time to shore up your 2009 goals. Where do you want to be in your personal and professional life at the end of 2010? Some of you have already chimed in:

Write a business plan. Kelly in Texas
Keep a journal. Allyson
Do soap as a part-time business. Dawnie in Wisconsin.
Adopt a baby. Carmen Rose in Virginia
Do an inventory. Anonymous
Introduce 20 new scents. E-Scentual in Florida.
Finish Chemistry course. Susan in British Columbia, Canada.

There are more on this post. Read through them if you missed the early starters. Their goals are inspiring. Like last year, I’ll randomly award one commenter a goody packet of essential oils, overpoured and underpoured colorants and random mis-pours from the Bramble Berry warehouse for readers who post any of their goals (it’s okay to keep some to yourself) here or on the previous post.

I have some goals to share as well. In 2009, Bramble Berry will be launching a series of How-To videos for cold process, melt and pour and all manner of toiletries. My goal for Q1 (Quarter One) is to finalize the set, write the scripts, shoot 3 months worth of videos and edit them. Another goal for Q1 is to launch our brand new website. Based on the feedback from this post, we’ve been working on a new, smarter shopping cart. My goal is to launch the cart in Q1.

In the personal goals category, I’d like to continue learning Chinese with 2 lessons per month, work out five times per week and start every work day off right with a protein shake.

To give yourself a better chance at success for your goals, they should be:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time Oriented

A generic: “Get Healthy” goal is none of these. Breaking down “Get Healthy” into something that is SMART looks like:

I will lose 10 pounds by April 15th. To do this, I will work out 5 times per week, eat a salad daily for lunch 5 times a week and limit my wine intake to 4 glasses per week.

Once you have your goal, write it down. I keep my goals (and my team’s goals) on whiteboards at the office (the whiteboard photo in this post is my actual goal board for the site launch), on Visionboards at my home and have emailed them to my Mastermind Group to help me be accountable. Sharing your goals is a great way to help keep yourself accountable.

One of the things that makes a Mastermind Group so effective is the power behind shared visions and goals. Typically, when thinking of goals, writing them down is the obvious way to state and work towards goals. However, this method has some disadvantages: if you’re not naturally great with language, connecting the words on paper with action steps might not come easily; if you’re a visual learner, boring words on a page might not excite you; written long-hand goals aren’t easily digestible at a glance.

My Mastermind Group follows the Jack Canfield idea of a Vision Board. I’ve also heard this referred to as a Painted Picture. The practice is simple:

1. Write your goals down
2. Look for visual representations of your goals in magazines or online
3. Make a collage with the visual representations
4. Put this in a frequently viewed area
5. Extra: put your written goals in the middle, so that the visuals are flowing outward from the actual original ideas

My Mastermind Group takes these Vision Boards and spends our December meeting reviewing the boards and getting feedback from the group about the goals and also the pictures on the board. Then, we have a good time for the rest of the year as various pictures off the Vision Boards come true as we reach our goals.