Definition: Big vision is what forces you to continue in the morning even though you quit the night before.

Do you think that simply by making a website, filling it with content and promoting it you will have a successful online business?  No way, it’s not going to happen like that.

Here is how it’s going to happen: First you will be excited.  You will wake up early and go to bed late.  You won’t be hungry and Friday nights will be spent in front of the computer.  You will work and work like a donkey.  You will keep pushing yourself – a few more web pages, a logo, an AdSense account.

Your website is done.

Next stage: you promote.  Join forums and leave what seem like hundreds of comments on countless blogs.  You follow everybody who lets you and have more followers than Moses.  You are a machine.

You are ready for the money to start rolling in.

A few days pass – nothing.  A few weeks pass – nothing.  For a while you assume your email account is not working but after a few tests you confirm it works fine.  You scratch your head, where are the visitors, where are the emails, where is the money?  What happened?

What happened is that you are an Entrepreneur.

It Is Difficult To Be An Entrepreneur – Nobody Believes in New Ideas

There are three categories of people in the business world: people who want, people who make, and people that bring these two together.  You are the third type – you are an entrepreneur.

Your job  as an entrepreneur  is to find people that want something, find people that can produce it, and then make everything work so that the two of them have a mutually beneficial relationship.  When everybody is happy you get paid for setting the whole thing up.

For example, with a website your job as an entrepreneur is to find a problem people have, find (or make) a website which solves the problem and finally get the people with the problem to visit the website.  When it works everybody is happy.  People’s problems are solved and you get paid by monetizing the website.

It sounds easy, but as every entrepreneur quickly finds out – it is one of the hardest jobs in the world.

Being a entrepreneur is about trying new ideas.  But new ideas have resistance.

Your friends will support you at the beginning but when it take longer than it should your friends will urge you to give up.  When you have worked countless hours and see no results you will feel like giving up.   You will start to doubt yourself.  You will start to ask, if it is such a good idea why has nobody thought of it before, if its such a good idea why is it taking so long to become successful.

An entrepreneur must struggle through a lot of doubt and negative feedback.  When success is taking a lot longer than you expect and everybody around you is telling you to quit you need something that will force you to keep going.

Without A Big Vision You Will Quit

Adam Toren and Matthew Toren started being entrepreneurs before either of them were ten years old.  Since then they have had many successful business ventures ranging from importing stereo equipment to refurbishing and rebranding a pool hall.  They made money, but more importantly they gained a lot of experience.

They recently come out with a new book: Small Business, Big Vision.  They have this to say about an entrepreneur’s need to have a big vision:

“Every single person who launches and develops a business faces obstacles and challenges along the way – period.  There are no exceptions.  You, too, will come up against opposition in many forms, often even from within your own head.  And all the tricks, tools and action steps in the world – no matter how sound they may be – won’t help you one bit if you don’t have the right outlook and strong, clear vision.”

A big clear vision is what gets you through the rough patches along the way.  You need a big vision to push you forward when everything is pushing you back.

As a entrepreneur you are walking through uncharted fields.  There are no clear signposts along the way and no indications on how much farther you have to go.  You must simply believe and keep going forward.

A big vision helps you move forward.  Adam and Matthew describe the big vision as “that picture in your mind of future possibilities”.  Every entrepreneur has a big vision, it comes naturally, it is the reason you to make that extra effort to succeed.  Some people watch TV and go to bed but an entrepreneur will wake up early, go to bed late, and work and work like a a donkey – all for the big vision to come true.

My big vision is to wake up every morning, eager for the day ahead, able to do what what I love doing. Without this vision I  would of quit this website a  long time ago.

Have a big vision, without it you’re screwed.