The following is an excerpt from Julio Vincent Gambuto’s ebook Freelance Heaven: 100 Ways to Make Freelance Life Easier and Avoid Freelance Hell.
Large companies pay consultants millions of dollars to define three things: their mission, vision, and values. I have seen the proposals and the bills. There are more PowerPoint presentations created on this topic than there are projectors to shine those digital decks onto Cubicleland conference room retractable screens. They serve a business purpose, a spiritual purpose, and a very practical marketing purpose. And every successful brand has developed them.
Look at any major company’s website and click on their “About Us” page. One of the subpages is usually called “Our Mission” or some version of the same. This is where they post years of corporate and consultancy thinking boiled down to three statements that serve as the foundation of their business. These three statements determine how they market, allot resources, and make large-scale strategy decisions.
First, the mission. A company’s mission is about its consumers. For you and me, it’s about our clients/readers/customers, etc. What will the company provide them? No company ever says, “Our mission is to make a [boatload] of cash.” The mission is focused on the experience that the customer will have when using the company’s products. At Coca-Cola, for example, the mission is “To refresh the world. To inspire moments of optimism and happiness. To create value and make a difference.” Whether or not you buy that or think that the mission should be “To get every woman in America hooked on Diet Coke,” that’s their official mission. That’s the experience that they want you to have when you drink a Coke. You should feel refreshed, happy, and grateful to The Great Coca-Cola Company for making a difference in your day. And then you should go back to that same vending machine tomorrow morning at 11 AM for your daily dose. The mission is a simple statement that defines why you exist for the customer.
Look at Blue Apron—the sustainable-food home-delivery company. They have a page called “Our Mission” on their main website navigation. Their mission is “to make incredible home cooking accessible to everyone.” That’s a super simple statement that explains why they exist for the customer.
Next, the vision. The vision is about the company. It may be framed or worded to somehow be about the customer or consumer, but it shouldn’t be. It’s about the company. At its most basic, it answers the general question, “What kind of company do you want to be in five years?” For example, Amazon’s vision is “to be earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” That’s about them, their goals, their ideal company. For your freelance business, this is about your vision of your business in one, five, ten years. The vision is a simple statement that defines your goal for your business.
Last, the values. The values are kind of like House Rules, but on a more macro level. What are the guiding principles that you will either abide by (or that are already part of your culture) that will define your business? Whole Foods has a list of seven “core values” and says of them, “These are not values that change from time to time, situation to situation or person to person, but rather they are the underpinning of our company culture.” Important to note? These values do not change; they are the underpinning; they make the company special. For your freelance business, your values are the same—guiding principles by which you operate.
First define, then stay connected to, your own mission, vision, and values. They can provide a roadmap for growth, help you make decisions, or just make you feel like you run a Fortune 500 company.