Running a business comes with a certain amount of mandatory jargon. You’ve got short-term goals, long-term objectives, sales targets, KPIs, EBITDA, and a thousand other things to keep track of. When it comes to setting the course for your business, though, three words tend to pop more than others: goals, mission, and purpose. I want to spend some time discussing why these terms matter, and how you can use them to your advantage.
Let’s talk terminology: Purpose, goals, and mission statements
There’s a case to be made that goal, purpose, and mission are all synonyms. And there are certainly times when we use the terms interchangeably. However there are certain nuances in the way we use these words.
- Goals tend to be shorter-term and achievable. We set goals because we want to achieve them; they offer motivation and signify progress.
- A mission tends to be high level and semi-removed from daily operations. Mission statements are aspirational—accomplishing the mission might even imply there’s no longer a need for the business.
- Purpose has less history as a business term, and that creates an opportunity for business owners. While many entrepreneurs see their business as an extension of their personal purpose, there’s often a line (albeit a blurry one) between a company’s mission statement and the founder’s reason for creating.
Do these distinctions matter?
Most business owners will, at some point or another, find themselves alone with these questions: Is this working? Do I keep going? Am I successful?
These are tough questions, so the framework you use to answer them matters. If you judge your company’s success using short-term goals you can miss the forest for the trees and recency bias can further warp your responses. If your latest initiative missed its target, or if you just landed a huge new client, your outlook may not align with more measurable criteria.
If you measure success against your mission statement, however, you’re likely to fall short by design. This can breed discouragement and make it harder to track real progress you’ve made toward long-term objectives.
If you measure your success against your personal purpose, however, you’re much more likely to walk away with the perspective you’re looking for.
Ask: Is your business working to help you fulfill your purpose? This question helps you zoom out from short-term goals and the success of any single project. It also helps you zoom in from the 5,000 foot view of a mission statement. It puts your business in context—your company is part of your purpose; it’s not your whole purpose.
This subtle shift in thinking can help you generate the confidence required to make key decisions, take prudent risks, and know when to cut your losses.
Purpose in action
The best way I can illustrate the power of purpose when it comes to running a business is to share an example. While the following scenario is hypothetical, it summarizes a dilemma I’ve seen play out repeatedly across growing businesses.
Imagine that Sarah is a physical therapist. She developed a specialization in pelvic floor therapy—something that can be life changing for women post-partum. Not only is this type of PT incredibly effective, it’s also fairly new and not well publicized, which allows Sarah to build a successful business around her expertise. She’s able to reach numerous women, help train other therapists, and change the overall narrative that moms should just accept certain physical limitations.
After 10 years, however, Sarah starts to feel boxed in. She’s proud of what she’s built, but she feels like she’s gotten everything she can out of this particular specialization. She’s hit every short-term goal she’s set for herself, and when she sits down to think about what’s next, she draws a blank—nothing about her current path excites her anymore.
Sarah tries to recalibrate her next steps by looking at the mission statement she wrote for her business—to help people achieve health through a better understanding of their bodies. It doesn’t help; she’s both achieved it and barely made a dent, depending on how you spin it.
So Sarah takes a different approach. She considers her purpose in life. Being a mom is core to who Sarah is; being a mom who raises healthy children and leads by example is an important part of her purpose. That’s part of what led her to specialize in pelvic floor therapy; she wanted moms to have an improved quality of life, so they could act as healthy role models to their children.
Once she revisits that framework, she can reassess her relationship with, and goals for, her business. For instance, moms face a diverse set of injuries, so broadening her clientele would still align with her stated purpose to help moms take control of their health. She might also scale back her hours for a few years to focus on her own kids—an equally important part of her purpose.
At the end of the day, what Sarah’s story illustrates isn’t that purpose provides all the answers. It’s that purpose can be just as effective when applied to business challenges as it is for personal challenges.
What does this mean for you?
The next time you feel stuck in your business, I suggest you take a leap of faith and stop thinking about your business. Instead, start thinking about your personal purpose. What kind of life do you want to be living? Why did you start this business in the first place? What parts of your business make you feel aligned with the universe? What parts of running your business drain your energy?
At the end of this exercise, you may discover that your original questions don’t matter anymore. It might give you an entire new set of questions to consider. Regardless of the outcome, this exercise can help you maintain a sense of balance. That balance can inspire confidence, help prevent burnout, and in general lead to a more lasting sense of fulfillment.
If you want help figuring out how your personal sense of purpose aligns with your business goals (and what that relationship means to your finances), let’s talk.
