by Christan Hiscock, CEO and co-founder of Kardia Financial Group
Many people have great visions for their companies. Very few put them into action. Fewer still do it successfully.
If you want to be one of the rare few who brings their business vision to life, you’ve got to get the power of Influence, Inspiration and Intention working for you.
The Power of Influence Doesn’t Start Where You Think
Most people go directly to the ways they can influence others with their vision, which is why they’re at a disadvantage from the get-go.
The place you actually need to start is your level of influence with yourself, which can be determined by three seemingly simple questions:
Where are you right now?
Get real with this. Many people don’t like where they are, so they avoid looking at it. That’s not helpful. You can’t influence something you won’t look at. The reality is that no matter what vision you want to bring to life, you must be clear on the resources you have at hand – time, money, people to help, and so on – and you need to know what resources you will need to bring in. You can only do that if you get real with yourself and your current situation.
Where do you want to go?
This needs to be clearly and tangibly defined. If you can’t define your business vision for yourself first, how will you ever be able to explain it to someone else well enough to influence their actions? And, if you can’t define it for yourself, you’ll never know what you’re really doing. You just can’t bring that to life.
What are you willing to do to get there?
This is the clincher. The “If you build it, they will come,” idea of business is a huge myth. It takes dedication, determination, and a lot of hustle. You’re going to have to make sacrifices. The greatest business people in the world don’t “hope” their visions become a reality. They do what it takes to make it happen, and the place everyone has to start is in mastering the internal game of influence over themselves first.
If your vision isn’t something you live and breathe every day; if you’re not obsessed with it; or if it doesn’t completely fire your heart and soul, so much that you’re willing to do just about anything to bring it to life, then it’s not going to happen.
Wishy-washy won’t get you anywhere. And if you’re not completely stoked by your purpose in this, the obstacles that you need to get around will become the walls you hit that stop you in your tracks.
Your habits will define your success and only you can decide which habits you’re going to put in place to make sure you reach your goals. Only you can set your non-negotiable standards, that get done no matter what. It’s the people who have an internal will of steel and the power of influence over themselves and their actions first, that make it to the next stage of influence, which is influencing others. Realizing this has been pivotal in my business journey with Kardia Financial Group.
Inspiration Is an Inner and Outer Game
Once again here, you have to go inside first. If your vision doesn’t pull you toward it, you’re going to exhaust yourself pushing it forward. If that happens, you’ll never have enough energy to get your vision over the finish line.
When your passion for your vision lights you up, it will have the power to light other people up too through your excitement. You have to love it – everything about it. The perspective, the paradigm change it brings, and the difference it makes in the world. When you have that kind of passion for it, you will inspire others too, as long as you also have:
Clarity – People can’t get inspired by something they don’t understand. Make sure it’s so simple and so clear that an 11-year-old can get it right away, otherwise, you’ll lose them.
A Compelling Message – Your message needs to make them say, “I don’t have that and I want it!” How is what you do going to make a difference for them that they just can’t live without?
The Next Step – It’s all well and good to get someone fired up, but that will only last for a few minutes or a few days if you’re lucky. If you want to make a real difference for people, give them an obvious way to take the next step with you.
Intention and Follow Through
If you want things to change, you must change. If you want to put your vision into action, you have to take action. Ideas are great but they don’t go anywhere without implementation, and that’s where your intention (the purpose behind your big vision) and the follow through on it come into play. But you can’t do it blindly. You must have a strategy, and that takes reverse engineering.
That means you need to start with the end goal in mind and work your way backward, tracking the goals and milestones for every stage of your vision’s journey, back to where you are right now. This is where the first three questions you had to ask yourself come back full circle.
You have to know your end game and you also have to be very clear on where you are right now, and what resources you need to bring that vision to life. From there it’s simply a daily mind game you get to play with yourself.
Which is why knowing the answer to “What are you willing to do to get there?” is so important.
Your intention has to align with your vision. It has to inspire you to take action and you have to be willing to do it. This is where the winners and losers in this game are made. Some people point to motivational issues, but motivation isn’t the problem. It’s not that the people who don’t follow through lack motivation; they have it, but they just have more motivation to binge watch Netflix than to put their vision into action.
If you struggle with that, then you need to go back to the beginning, because if the business vision that you have isn’t ceaselessly pulling you toward it, it’s not the right one. When your vision becomes close to an obsession, you’ll be on your way, because that’s when you’ll be motivated to set your intention to reach your goal, and make it happen no matter what.
Once your intention is set and your strategy is in place, then it’s simply a matter of taking daily steps toward it. Even the smallest step creates movement. Taking action is the only way you’ll bring your powerful vision to the world.
To Wrap It All Up
Influence, inspiration, and intention. They are the three necessary factors you must activate inside yourself first before you’ll ever be able to activate it in others. When they come together, they create a powerful combination that pulls people toward your vision as much as it pulls you. And that’s how you’ll get to put your vision into action.
Christan Hiscock is the CEO and co-founder of Kardia Financial Group, which was born from the desire to change the financial services industry through heart-centered services that focus on what’s truly important; the people. Based in Calgary, Kardia Financial Group believes that the financial services industry should not be solely focused on dollars, but on helping people truly get to the heart of their financial goals.
