How to Put a Mission Statement Into Practice

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Practical Implementation of a Mission Statement

This part of the course delves into the strategies for implementing your mission statement into daily business operations. We'll explore different ways to translate your mission statement into practical actions that align with your business goals.

How to Put a Mission Statement Into Practice – Transcript

So in the last video, we covered operational mission statements, but now you need to apply that to your own business. But businesses are complicated, mission statements are critical, and people can have enough variation in what they want to achieve with their business that this topic deserves a deeper dive. That's why we're going to help you walk through the task of creating a mission statement for your business. 

Hey everybody, Will Scheren here from Small Business Startup Guide by TRUiC. This video is part of a larger course dedicated to helping small business owners cut through the noise and get to the essentials of starting and operating their business. If that sounds like it would be really useful to you be sure to like and subscribe. 

As I've mentioned a few times now, as we move through this course, we're going to be looking through the lens of creating a small business while using a barbershop as an example to illustrate each of the business theories that we'll be covering in the course. To operate this imaginary barbershop effectively, just like a real business, we’ll need this barbershop to make some key decisions surrounding why it's in business in the first place. 

In the last video, we covered what makes a great operational mission statement. So let's give this imaginary barbershop a bit of a background story and get it on a mission. We're going to be calling the barbershop “North End Barbershop.” We're going to be covering how this company was named in a later video, but for now, you just need to know that that's the name. 

We're going to say that the owner of the shop learned to cut hair while working in a barbershop in Los Angeles, where he had the opportunity to cut the hair of celebrities. He's since returned to where he grew up in Bloomington, Illinois. He's been licensed to be a barber for quite some time, and he wants a place where he can interact with customers face-to-face. 

He loves barbering because he likes the satisfaction of working with his hands and that his business provides a simple service that sends his customers away better-looking than when they came in. He's really good at what he does and is therefore able to charge a premium price for his cuts. He also has exclusive distribution rights with a small men's hair and body product. They provide a product to sell in his shop and online. 

He currently has one other barber that he can pull into work with him when he starts his shop. He's going to open the shop in Bloomington, Illinois, and the owner loves living there and has no plans to move anytime soon. He's good at hospitality and gives his customers a great experience. He's assessed the competition in Bloomington and believes he can have the best shop in town to get a fade. 

He hopes to make $156,000 in his first year in revenue, netting $75,000. He's starting the fiscal year, renting a new shop, purchasing new equipment, and is interested to know if he needs financing to make it all work. 

The owner has a vision for his life that requires him to be netting $250,000 per year, in less than five years. To get to that dollar amount, he plans to grow his current revenue by increasing his prices. He also might increase his capacity by adding more barbers and more chairs to his shop. And he also hopes to grow the sales of the men's care products that he sells. 

Based on this information, we have everything that we need to be able to outline what the business owner wants to accomplish, when he'll accomplish that goal, and the manner in which he plans to get it done. 

Essentially, this guy is cutting hair because he enjoys cutting hair. He enjoys being good at it and makes his customers feel great. He believes that his experience for cutting celebrities' hair in Los Angeles will provide him an unfair advantage in the Bloomington market. He thinks barbering can afford him the lifestyle that he wants, and it would keep him in the city that he wants to live in. Nothing really more and nothing really less than that. 

So based off of what we learned in the last several videos and what we just learned about the business owner, a good mission statement would be: “North End Barbershop exists to exceed $250,000 in annual profit in less than five years while providing Bloomington, Illinois, with an elevated barbershop experience.” 

To hammer this in, Let's match what the business owner wants for his business with the part of the mission statement it corresponds with. Enjoying cutting hair is simply covered by the fact that the word “barbershop” is part of the mission statement. That he’s good at cutting hair and has a coveted and unique experience in doing so is covered by the word elevated. If he is proud of being fast at cutting hair, he could replace the word elevated with quick. The adjective “elevated” will help him make decisions about his business, brand, and marketing efforts. 

Pay attention to any adjectives that you add to your mission statement because they will define how the business owner expects their business to be conducted. Thinking that owning a barbershop can afford him the lifestyle that he wants is covered by the quantitative measure of earning $250,000 a year in profit in less than five years. And keeping him in the city that he wants to live in is covered by the location of the shop being included in the mission. 

So there you go: our imaginary barbershop has a mission. I'll be saving this mission statement in a Word document and saving that in the “Business Assets” folder in a subfolder called “Mission Statement.” I've provided a template for you to download below this video, where you can create the same file for your business. In the next video, we're going to start crafting a financial projection for your business that will guide your journey. 

This video is part of a step-by-step course that gives business owners all of the essential information to start and operate their business. We've provided a link for you to get access to all of the free and discounted business tools we mentioned in this course below this video. 

Be sure to like and subscribe to get more of this content. We'll see you in the next video, and if you have any questions, let us know.