Your Mission

What exactly is a mission statement?

The most important part of the business plan is your mission statement.  The mission statement is going to set the tone for every decision  your business makes!  It is a brief statement that completely sums up your business,  and what makes it unique.  I can not stress enough the importance of the mission statement, and it should not be taken lightly.  This is not an area of your business plan that will come easily and you should be spending a great deal of time making sure the wording of the mission statement is precise.

Why?  If you’re reading this your probably looking to start a cake business or a bakery, so why can’t your mission statement just say something like “to make really great tasting cakes that are beautiful.”  If you are starting a cake business, yeah I hope you make beautiful and tasty cakes, but a mission statement like that is not original and is not going to help your business make long term decisions.

Let’s look a a few examples of some really great mission statements:

Google:

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Stephen R. Covey’s Mission Statement:
To inspire, lift and provide tools for change and growth of individuals and organizations throughout the world to significantly increase their performance capability in order to achieve worthwhile purposes through understanding and living principle-centered leadership.

Facebook:

Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world  more open and connected.

What do these mission statements have in common?    They are specific to their organization’s core values, but they don’t have to outline every detail of what they do.  Try to focus on wording that gives you room to grow but defines how unique your business is.  Whenever a decision needs to be made you should be able to look to your mission statement and ask “does this fit with our mission?”  If the answer is “no” than that decision is made.

Take a lot of time on this part of your business plan.  It will pay off in the end!

Next Tuesday – Vision