Dreaming is often the foundation of creating your ideal reality. For many business owners, their success started with a simple dream: “What if I could do things my way?” “What if I didn’t have to report to a boss?” “What if I could give my family everything they ever wanted and not have to answer to anyone but myself?”
As a successful business owner, one of the things that makes you different is your ability to dream big and then execute on it. Let’s look at a couple fictional but representative examples of how dreaming could help you find new opportunities to buttress your business’ strengths and strengthen your company’s weaknesses.
A Dream of Security
Stacy Glick had built her business from literally nothing. Growing up without a home, she always dreamed about building homes to support people like her.
After a decade as a field manager for a home-building company, she set out to start her own business. Over 25 years, she built a multi-million-dollar company that supported her, her local community, and others struggling with homelessness.
As she approached her retirement, she worried about what would happen to her business once she left it. She wanted assurances that the next generation of leaders would continue to support her dream to help the homeless even if it didn’t maximize the company’s profits.
“I found a way to do this for 25 years from nothing. I expect the next leader to do the same with everything I’ve given them.”
Keeping the Dream Alive
In this example, Stacy dared to dream big by founding her business and creating success for herself and the people she cared about. Like many business owners approaching their retirement, she worried about what her legacy would be once she left the business.
Stacy had assumed that anyone who shared her ideals wouldn’t have the money to pay her for her ownership share. She had no interest in shortchanging herself for all her hard work.
She dreamed of finding someone who shared her ideals to run the company after she retired. She also knew that many of the biggest players in her industry who could afford to buy her business were seeking more ways to maximize their profits. She knew the importance of maximizing profits but did not want her goal of helping the homeless to fall by the wayside in pursuit of maximum profitability.
She just didn’t know how to make her two big dreams come together.
She shared her concerns with her Advisor Team. Her Advisor Team helped her scout out potential leaders who shared her ideals and would keep the business’ culture aligned with what Stacy had founded the business on.
They also showed Stacy how she could execute her business exit by selling shares of ownership to the next generation of leaders, giving her time to become more comfortable with the direction the company would go in as she began to leave it.
By asking these big questions, Stacy found answers that she never would have known about if she had tried to approach her plans for a successful future with cold rationalism. Stacy dreamed big and her advisors found ways to make her dreams a reality.
Rebuilding Shattered Dreams
Dr. Henry Patel had long been renowned in his industry for his steady hands during complicated surgeries. Dr. Patel was most comfortable doing things with his hands rather than sitting in meetings about business strategies. But as he grew older, he found a new dream: helping people find quick, accessible care through his practice.
To do so, Dr. Patel would need to grow his network of doctors and streamline operations related to medical insurance claims. The solution he continued to come across for streamlining insurance claims was by automating the insurance claims process with generative AI so that he and his staff could focus on more hands-on work.
However, as Dr. Patel’s practice began to implement pilot programs to automate the claims process, his IT team and legal department quickly realized that the software he used to streamline processes could do irreparable harm to his practice and reputation by sharing health data in ways that violated HIPAA.
In his haste to help, Dr. Patel was on the precipice of making an extremely bad business decision. His IT team managed to remove all software and permissions before any information was shared, but the experience had shaken Dr. Patel. Now, he wanted to make sure that something like this would never happen again.
Keeping Dreams on Track
In Dr. Patel’s case, his initial efforts at turning dreams into a reality nearly destroyed his original dream of building a successful medical practice.
Though Dr. Patel’s dream to make the medical-claim experience more user friendly was well intended, in practice, it could have done more harm than good to the very people he was trying to help.
Fortunately, before Dr. Patel went too far in executing on his dreams, his team of trusted advisors helped guide him back on the path of making his dream a reality in ways that did not expose him to unintended negative consequences. This is an example of why it could be a good idea to run your ideal dreams past an objective third party that has your best interests in mind.
Dream Big, Dream Together
Successful businesses typically need visionary thinkers to succeed. Successful business owners like you often have this vision and may even have strategies to execute on these visions.
When you can combine your ability to dream big with a team of advisors and next-level managers that can help you turn those dreams into reality, it could jump start the process of creating plans for a successful future. Likewise, it could help you avoid some of the unintended consequences that big dreams can create. We strive to help business owners identify and prioritize their objectives with respect to their businesses, their employees, and their families. If you have questions on this topic, we can help with more information or a referral to another experienced professional.
About Altus Exit Strategies
David Jean is the Director of Altus Exit Strategies and a Principal at Albin, Randall & Bennett, where he is also the Practice Leader of the Succession Planning, Business Advisory, and Construction & Real Estate Services Teams. David works with business owners who want to improve their business’s value before they sell through the Seven-Step Exit Planning Preparation™ process. He has worked with companies from $5 million to $50 million in revenue across a range of industries.
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