Regis Mejia: February 2012

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours." -Henry David Thoreau

If you are an Entrepreneur the vision of your business is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal. It's not easy developing a vision, in fact, it took me nearly 8 years to fully formulate mine but when I finally did it was clear in my mind. For the record, I think vision is more than just an idea it's more of a strong visual image that allows you to almost see the future.

I was literally at a bar in Louisville, KY when it hit me. I had been thinking about something for a long time and suddenly it appeared and I literally sat at the bar mapping out the concept on a napkin, this gave my vision birth. The first version of my napkin concept was really terrible and it was even hard for even me to understand. But eventually I refined the napkin to a point that it made sense to me, the following is what I finally developed:

Next thing you should do is validate your vision concept with friends and family. Start by calling all your friends, family and whoever will listen to your lofty vision and get some feedback from them. It’s important that you also learn to read body language; often times people will give you positive feedback just to be nice- that's not what you need but you can't blame them.

In my case nearly all the people that I shared my vision with said it's a great idea and they could see Talentize being big deal. This is when the real journey began because once your vision starts to grow in your mind, it doesn't matter what you are doing it will always be there nudging for attention. Birthing a vision is like an infant baby that requires an incredible amount of energy, attention and caring to make it a fully developed concept.

Yes there is a typo on this image, the word judge should be "Judged"

Making your vision happen should be a full-time endeavor, don’t kid yourself thinking that you can start your business part-time. Even if you have a full-time job, you should be thinking about your vision full-time and feeding it daily. When you wake up the morning and it’s the first thing you think about, you have successfully crossed a milestone in manifesting your vision.

While driving your vision, make sure to create all the tools that you need to help communicate your concept to potential partners, supporters, mentors and investors. I recommend immediately developing a “Pitch Deck” and putting all your concepts in a framework that’s easy to understand. A pitch deck is not a business plan, in fact, if you are starting an internet company I don’t recommend a formal business plan (I don’t think it’s necessary).

A vision statement might be hard to do, this exercise was actually rather difficult for me but I think important in establishing the over arching purpose of the company. Establishing a vision statement will help you to focus on activities/task that that truly latter up to your vision. The following is our vision today:

Talentize mission is to be the earth’s largest talent search engine while empowering people to engage and discover talent around the world.

I also recommend that you begin to manifest concepts in your head on paper. For instance, begin to draw out how do you envision your company logo, values, employees, services, office space/location, conference room, and type of people you employ. Think about little things, for instance I like to think Talentize will allow dogs and video games at the office, see images below.

Lastly, you should always be communicating your vision to all your partners, employees, customers and investors. Don't just make your vision a statement on the website or wall but rather make your vision part of your company DNA, make the vision the driving force behind everything.