Before working hard on your business, you need to identify what you really want to do with your business. This sounds vanilla, but not many webmasters are clear about their goals.
Motto
It is clear that the primary objective of any business is to make profits. However, if a business focuses only on profits, it will soon be selling junk products as expensively as it can. People will walk away from such a business. So, an obsession with profits is not profitable. Instead, as the founder of Panasonic, Konosuke Matsushita, said: "Profits are rewards for the services to the society." The motto of your business should be based on what kind of contribution you want to make. Say you are operating a restaurant. Your motto might be "Feed people well to make them healthy and energetic", or "Make mealtimes unforgettable". Even though each motto consists of only one sentence, depending on which motto you abide by your restaurant will be totally different. Needless to say, your restaurant will also be completely different from profit-obsessed restaurants.
Commitment
It is widely understood that just writing a fancy mission statement does not accomplish anything, unless you act upon it. If you are running a business all by yourself, all you have to do is to act on your motto all by yourself. But if you hire some employees, all of them should buy into your motto. In his book, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People", Stephen Covey emphasized: "No involvement [in making a mission statement], no commitment." Many corporations have impressive mission statements, but these are written by just a handful of executives. So, other employees do not care about them. In such organizations, any mission statement will be worthless. On the other hand, at one hotel chain, every employee -- from the doorboy to the managers, literally everyone -- created a mission statement pertaining to their hotel's needs (of course, such mission statements should be in harmony with the hotel chain's master mission statement). Because everyone was involved in creating their mission statement, everyone was committed to acting upon it. As the result, that hotel chain keeps providing exceptional customer service. Make sure everyone, not just you, works toward common goals.
© May, 2013