Small Business, Big Vision: Lessons on How to Dominate Your Market from Self-Made Entrepreneurs Who Did it Right

Chapter 1

The Importance of Having BIG Vision

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.

—Jack Welch

Entrepreneurs come from every conceivable background: every ethnic group, economic class, education level, and physical ability; almost every age group, and both genders. Some come from generations of business owners, while others are the first in their families to ever consider starting their own business. Among the ranks of those who call themselves entrepreneurs are inventors, programmers, and artists, while others excel at building teams, selling, or devising marketing plans. It is difficult to come up with a description of what a “common” entrepreneur looks like or acts like, or to pinpoint the necessary skills or experience one must have. In fact, there is an endless list of differences among entrepreneurs, but there is one thing all entrepreneurs have in common: Vision.

Why is vision a universal entrepreneurial trait? It is because the purest definition of an entrepreneur is: “Someone who starts a business with a great deal of initiative and potential risk.” These individuals' willingness (and desire) to take that initiative and assume that risk sets them apart from everyone else in the world.

Every entrepreneur has experienced this feeling. Sometimes it's a spark that springs to life while brainstorming with a business associate; other times it's a surge of inspiration while in the ...