[2025 Audit] Vision Is Optional (If You Love the Process)

And it is that a crystal clear vision is not as important as I thought it was when it comes to business. And so this is actually an unlearning. You know, if you go back and look at some content that I've shared over the years, I talk a lot about the importance of vision. In fact, I've got a whole exercise that I used to coach people on to help them extract the vision from their head. If they were building something and they were fuzzy on what it was they were building, and who they were building for, and what they wanted that business to be...

And, you know, the thought behind it was: "Hey, you've got to get really clear on what you're building so that you can be intentional with the decisions that you make." Because I see a lot of people build businesses that they eventually become prisoners of. You know, like they get three, four, five years in, and the business itself is cranking out sales, generating revenue, it's got profit, but they can't stand the business. Right? Like they either can't stand the team they're working with, the product that they're delivering, the clients that they're working with, or the systems are kind of holding them hostage, and everything is dependent on them. And there are things you can do as you're building to help you avoid ending up with a business that you really don't want, if you take the time to sit and reflect on that.

And I still believe that to be true in large part. You know, I do believe that if you're proactively building something with a clear vision, it makes things a lot easier. Right? Like you've got a decision-making filter on. You know, new client comes in the door and offers you a bunch of money to do something... if you've got a really clear vision on what it is you're building and why you're building it, then you can look at that and put it through your filter and say, "No. Sounds like a lot of money, but not something that I want to do because it's going to conflict with where I really want to go with this business."

Again, still believe that to be true. The thing that I've learned though this past year is: that's kind of like the Jeff Bezos approach. Right? Like Jeff Bezos kind of famously articulated what Amazon was going to be very early to shareholders. And I'll actually link to a shareholder letter in the notes of this show below. And you read it and you're like, "Damn. Like that dude clearly a visionary." Like, I mean just almost prophetically said, "Hey, this is what Amazon is going to be," and then piece by piece built that thing. And that is one way to build a business.

Now, the lesson that I've learned and the reason I've changed my mind is because that's not the only way to do this. There is another way, which is: treat it more like a blank canvas. And, you know, it's more art than it is science. Like you're not necessarily assembling every single thing and every single piece and every brick intentionally with a clear outcome in mind. You are building something because you love building.

Right? And you are going to iterate as you go. So the strategy is going to kind of unfold more dynamically as you make decisions. So you go into something and you say, "You know, I know I want to build a business. I'm not exactly sure... like the vision isn't crystallized. I can't sit down and write you a vision statement of exactly what this thing's going to look like. But I have some general direction. I have some general preferences. And frankly I just love building businesses. So I'm going to march down this path. I'm going to let the strategy unfold. And I'm going to iterate very intentionally as I go."

And I don't need the clarity of the vision to pull me forward. I have the love of the process that is keeping me going. And I look at those and I don't think that there's a right and a wrong way. That would be more like, you know, Steve Jobs. He kind of famously said, "You can only connect the dots and find sight looking backwards." Right? Like it's... and that's how I'm looking at this now.

You've got kind of like a Bezos approach, which is crystal clear vision, build intentionally and proactively towards that thing. Cool. You can write the letter to the shareholders on day one and 10, 20 years later go, "Damn. That's pretty accurate." Or you can take more of the Jobs approach, which is: "Hey, we know this is going to be somewhat random. We know that there's going to be a lot of iteration. We know that, you know, the decisions we make today are going to create optionality that doesn't even exist tomorrow. So why spend a ton of time like pretending that we know exactly what it's going to look like? How about we get started? How about we, you know, just intentionally make decisions as we go, and we let that strategy unfold?"

And I'm now looking at that and knowing that that is in the arsenal of entrepreneurship. I just say it's an unlearning because it's a reminder or it reinforces that there's more than one way to do this. Right? No matter what the gurus and the YouTubers and all of the content creators—myself included—say... Like we give you a perspective, one way to do something. But it's not the only way.

And I think you can have the vision to pull you forward, or as long as you love the process, you can go about it with a lot more flexibility while you build. Now I will [add] one caveat to this: is if you go about this with a somewhat fuzzy vision or recognizing that it's a blank slate, blank canvas, and I'm going to build on it... if you don't love what you're doing, it will become very frustrating. And it will affect the sustainability of the business because it can be very frustrating.

Right? Like as you get to certain plateaus and thresholds and bottlenecks... and if you don't love the process of building, if it's not like an art to you and you're like, "Hey, you know what? All right, we're going to change directions here, we're going to change directions here"... it can get frustrating. So I do now believe, you know, you've either got a clear vision or you've got a love of the process.

In either case, those things are going to enable you to stay the course. Right? Like the clear vision, when those frustrations come up in business building, the vision of what the outcome's going to be is going to... it's going to pull you forward. And if you don't have it, the love of the process—because you actually love building—is going to increase your tolerance for the bullshit and the frustration that comes with business building.

Either one, you can keep going. Without either, I believe that one of the biggest challenges you have is going to be the sustainability of building a business because it can be extremely frustrating. And without one of those two things, it can be tough to keep going, and that's where I see most businesses fail. So that is one of my lessons as I reflect on the year. And I hope that you found it helpful, valuable. Adios.