What do you want to be remembered for as a business? It’s an important question without an easy answer, but let’s figure out how to get there today. Good morning friends, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently with clients talking through their mission statements. Now, most mission statements are bland…gutless, and generic at best. They serve little purpose other than putting some ink on a piece of paper to say that you have one. 

But… attaching mission to your business can actually serve to give it a purpose that is powerful and can propel you towards significant meaning in the working world.

Typically, the question we use when we ask business owners about their mission statement is…”What gets you out of bed in the morning and excited to do what you do?” For us, that’s always been liberating business owners from chaos.” It gets us jacked and ready to take on both the good and the bad of our weekly schedules.

I was working a few weeks ago with a client and asked him that question… it didn’t really land. Well, maybe it landed, but it didn’t lead us to a powerful mission statement. So I rephrased it…what do you want to be remembered for?

That got the juices flowing. He started throwing out keywords that propelled him forward to realizing his mission and what he wanted to be remembered for. Words like service, creativity, teamwork, leadership. All of that. Pieced together to help him understand his why!

So… if I was to ask you the same thing. Do you have an answer? 

Do you know what you want to be remembered for? And here’s the kicker… does your process reflect that. You have to take it one step further. 

If you want to be remembered for having the best, most qualified team, do you invest in them, send them to trainings, spend time developing them as leaders to make sure they are the best and the most qualified?

If you want to be remembered for having the best product in your industry, are you investing in R&D, getting feedback from your clients to see where you can improve, and making sure that no one is better?

If you want to be remembered for serving and helping your clients succeed, do you have meetings on the front end to capture that vision, do you take the time to listen, and is that a part of your process?

These things matter. Your process has to reflect your mission because it’s what you’re going to be remembered for.

Or are you like most people? Winging it… day after day. Not really knowing why you wake up and do what you do. Or what sets you apart. No, the future is a bit fuzzy, but it’s ok, we’ll figure it out.

No… take the time to build out a mission story that propels you forward. A mission statement that gets you excited to wake up in the morning and get to work instead of complaining that it’s Monday yet again.

You spend too much time at work (almost ⅓ of your life) to just get by. Get excited, know what you want to be remembered for…and then build out and invest in the processes to realize that mission.

That’s how it’s done. I would wager that if you went about every day with that kind of intentionality, your team would want to be apart of you business for a long, long time…and the inspiration that trickled out to the community would be contagious.

I hope that makes sense, so spend some time today asking yourself, what do you want to be known for.

Have a great week!