Most founders I've worked with aren't short of ambition.
They know what they want their business to become. They can normally describe the opportunity, the difference they want to make and why they started the company in the first place.
Where things often become harder is turning that ambition into a business that consistently delivers commercial results.
I've experienced that myself as a founder, and I've seen it repeatedly coaching, mentoring and advising businesses at different stages of growth.
There is often a big gap between having a compelling vision and having a clear commercial strategy for achieving it. And that gap matters.
Vision creates direction. Commercialisation creates momentum. You need both.
Start with why the business exists.
Before talking about revenue targets, marketing plans or sales pipelines, I like to go back to three basic questions.
What is our vision? Where are we trying to get to?
What is our mission? What are we actually going to do to get there?
What are our values? How are we going to behave while we're doing it?
These can sound like slightly soft questions. I don't think they are. Done properly, they create the foundations for some very hard commercial decisions.
If your vision is clear, you have a better chance of knowing which opportunities to pursue. If your mission is clear, you understand where to focus resources. If your values are real, rather than words on a wall, they help determine who you recruit, who you partner with, which clients you work with and how you make difficult decisions.
The problem isn't that businesses don't have vision, mission and values. Most do. The problem is that they're often disconnected from how the business actually operates.
Strategy is as much about saying no.
One of the biggest lessons I've learned in business is that growth rarely comes from doing everything. It comes from becoming increasingly clear about what you are going to be brilliant at.
- That means asking questions such as:
- Who are the customers we most want to serve?
- What problem are we exceptionally well placed to solve?
- Where do we create the greatest value and the best commercial returns?
- What should we stop doing?
- Which attractive opportunities would actually take us away from the business we're trying to build?
That last question is particularly important. When you're growing a business, opportunities are seductive: a new client, a new market, a new service, a partnership or a product idea.
Most founders are naturally opportunity-oriented. I'm certainly wired that way. But not every opportunity moves you towards your vision. Some just make you busier.
Good strategy creates a filter.
Turn the strategy into a commercial model.
Once there is clarity about direction, the next question is much more practical: How does this business actually make money - not theoretically, but consistently?
That means understanding:
- Who buys, why they buy and what they are prepared to pay for.
- How we reach them and how long it takes to convert them.
- What it costs us to deliver and where the strongest margins sit.
- How much recurring revenue we can create and where we are leaking value.
- What needs to be true for the business to reach the next stage.
This is the point where strategy stops being a document and starts becoming commercialisation.
Purpose > proposition > customer > revenue > delivery > profit
Every growing company has to connect those elements. If one of the connections is weak, growth gets harder.
Know what has to be true.
One of the simplest strategic questions I use with businesses is: What has to be true for us to achieve the vision?
Let's say a company wants to double in three years. Fine. What has to be true?
Perhaps it needs 50 more customers. Perhaps existing customers need to buy more. Perhaps a new market needs to succeed, prices need to increase or delivery capacity needs to double. Perhaps the business needs a stronger leadership team, or the founder needs to stop being involved in every decision.
Once you start working backwards from the destination, strategy becomes much more tangible - and, importantly, measurable.
That's important because strategy shouldn't be treated as certainty. You make your best judgement, execute, learn and adapt.
Commercialisation requires experimentation.
The other thing I've learned is not to assume you've got everything right. A strategy is a set of choices based on what you currently know. The market then tells you whether those choices were good ones.
So test. Talk to customers. Try the proposition. Measure conversion. Review pricing. Watch which services customers actually value. Learn which messages resonate. Understand why you win and why you lose. Then adapt.
Some of the best businesses I've worked with are incredibly ambitious about where they're going but surprisingly flexible about exactly how they'll get there. That's healthy. The vision can stay constant while the route evolves.
The connection matters.
For me, this is where vision, mission, values and commercial strategy come together.
The vision tells you where you're going. The mission defines what you're there to do. Your values influence how you make the journey. And the commercial strategy turns all of that into a sustainable business.
Take any one of those away and something is missing. A business that makes money but has no meaningful direction can drift. A business with a powerful purpose but no commercial model won't survive. And a strategy that doesn't reflect the organisation's values can create growth that nobody particularly enjoys being part of.
The goal is alignment.
Know what you're building. Know why it matters. Know who it's for. Then build a commercial engine capable of making it real.
That's when vision stops being an aspiration and starts becoming a business.
