Your Mission (should you choose to accept it)...

More biz talk with my cleaning lady, Kelli of Kelli's Cleaning Angels....

We got to talking about business plans today. She's been having a very hard time with her corporate clients after the January floods. They've all been pushing their cleaning services to drop their prices. She's ended up letting go of all her corporate clients because she can only meet their price demands by seriously dropping the quality of the work she's doing.

When she was struggling with that decision, she went back to her mission. Her mission includes doing extraordinary cleaning work. She couldn't drop her quality. She let the clients go.

We talked about how important the mission statement is in a business plan. A good mission statement captures the essence of what keeps us going as businesses. Money is virutally never enough of a motivation to keep you going for the long haul. A good mission statement captures what excites you about the work you do.

She brought up something else I hadn't thought of -- a good mission statement also contains an element of challenge. It should capture a standard that is something of a reach for you, something that's not a cakewalk. Your mission statement needs to inspire you and stretch you. Not impossibly so but reasonably so. I'm not sure I ever told my students that but if I teach business plans again, I will.