The Power of Mission and Vision Statements for Small Businesses
27:57 Share

Hey, before Chelsea gets here real quick, y'all, I have a $25 Amazon gift card that I want to give to you. So let me tell you how you could be the lucky recipient of that gift card. First and foremost, don't tell Chelsea I'm doing this because she's going to be mad that I'm giving this gift card to you and not to

not to her. So we know how much you guys love getting practical, no fluff marketing tips to help your small business thrive. And now we need a little help from you. Leaving a review for this podcast. Yes, the one you're listening to is one of the best ways that you can help us reach more small business owners like yourself. And to say thank you and give you that little nudge that you need, we're going to be giving you a chance to win a twenty five dollar Amazon gift card. So here's how it's going to work. Leave us a review.

on your favorite podcast platform, snap a quick screenshot, email it to us at help

at theseasonedmarketer.com or you can find us over on Instagram at theseasonedmarketer. You could send us a DM with the screenshot as well. We'll allow it. And that's it. You're in. Not only will you be entered to win, but your review helps us grow this SOB small owned business community and continue to bring you guys the latest and greatest to help you market

smarter and not harder. So pause for just a second, leave us that review, and then get ready for today's episode. It's a good one.

Hey everyone, welcome to the SOB Marketing Podcast where we celebrate the SOB that you are and if you haven't figured it out yet, we mean small owned business. We don't mean SOB. Listen, we know that as a small business owner, you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it. And while some days it may feel like the business is owning you,

If we're being honest with each other, I bet you would admit that you wouldn't give up the insanity for anything. Our commitment here at the SOB Marketing Podcast is to give you the real talk

Hey everybody and welcome back to the SOB Marketing Podcast. SOB as in Small Owned Business. I promise we are not calling you guys names.

Before we get started on this week's episode, just a little bit of housekeeping. Thank you so much for listening. If you're enjoying this podcast, make sure you share it with other SOBs and make sure that you leave us a five-star review. It helps us get in front of other small business owners so we can help spread the word on what works and what doesn't when it comes to marketing. Also, if you have a topic you want us to talk about, send us a DM.

or leave a comment. Or you could email us at help at the season marketer dot com. However you want to reach out to us, we would love to hear what you guys want us to talk about because we want to answer your marketing questions. And y'all, we do have a TLDL chapter too long. Didn't listen. So if you don't have time to listen to this entire conversation, then go ahead, click on that chapter. And once you get a second, make

Make sure you come back and listen to the full episode because there are a lot of things that you probably want to actually hear, you know, the actual thought process to this episode. So Vivian, my wonderful big sister, what are we talking about today?

Today, we are talking about something that may seem a little old-fashioned to small business owners, but we want to remind you guys of how important it is, and that is mission and vision statements.

Yes. All right. So Chelsea, tell me, because if you guys don't know, Chelsea and I are both marketing professionals. We both went to the same university and studied the same major. So when you were coming up in school, in college, Chelsea, what was the conversation like?

in marketing school about mission and vision statements. Like, do you remember that? Yes, for the most part. I remember it being very, very important. Like your mission and vision statements were the number one thing you had to have as a business. If you didn't have anything else, you needed to have those two statements. Yeah. And let me tell you guys something that I thought was really interesting. You know, um,

There is always the education component of the, of the industry that you're, you know, going into. So for example, let's say you're a physical therapist, you go to school for that. I'm sure that in school, they teach you things that then when you get out in the real world, you're like, why did we spend any time on that? Because like, it's not super applicable. Um,

Mission and vision statements from a marketing perspective have always been super applicable, but I was disappointed when I entered the real world in how many small businesses I encountered and big businesses that did not take the time to stay up to date with this or to even do this. Because I think if they were to do it, it would have fixed or resolved a lot of the issues that they were having in the organization. Right.

And so Chelsea, why don't we start the conversation? Oh, go ahead. Did you have a hot take on that? I don't have a hot take, but I have a memory. When I was graduating my senior year, we had to do a senior project and our project was to rebrand a local small business that was struggling. They reached out to us and said, hey, we need help. Can you create a marketing plan? You know, what do you want to do? Anything's on the table. And we had a lot of people

One of the things they didn't have was a good mission and vision. So we went in, we, my group, because it was in different groups, my group completely rebranded, gave them a mission and a vision, gave them this whole marketing plan. They didn't do anything.

Of the suggestions they were given, not by my group, by any group. Yeah. Like they kind of took all of our presentations and all of our papers and all of our like booklets because, you know, it's a senior thesis. Like you have to write this entire marketing plan out. How many? I think that I think there were six groups.

So they got six different marketing plans and they kind of went, all of this sounds like a lot of work and I don't want to do any of this. We're just going to continue doing what we're doing. Okay. This business had already gone bankrupt once. Oh yeah. And so here's the thing, I guess from your perspective in that particular group, you guys understood that there was a lot of value in creating a mission and vision statement. And y'all I'm telling you right now,

I get it. When I say it out loud, I know some of you may be sitting there rolling your eyes, maybe saying, I need to listen to another podcast episode because they're not going to, you know, it's not super valuable. But so let's go ahead. What we hope to do by the end of this conversation is have you convinced that having a solid grasp on a vision, a mission and vision statement is actually going to move the needle forward in

in your small business and knowing the difference between the two is key. All right. So Chelsea, let's start the conversation there. What is a mission statement? Your mission statement and your mission as a small business is

is going to define the primary purpose of your small business. What are you trying to do as a small business? What are you currently doing? What are your objectives and what is your purpose? So for example, Vivian and I just recently went through our mission and vision. We tweaked it. And our mission statement is to provide resources to small business owners that

that grow their confidence in managing their marketing in-house. So that is what we're currently doing.

That is the goals, the objectives, our purpose. So Chelsea, let's deconstruct that a little bit to show people like why that can have such an effect on the day-to-day operations in our decision-making, okay? So let's say you're a small business owner and you don't have a mission statement, okay? You're like, I just, I sell these types of products and that's it. We could have done the same thing, but...

One of the things that we were talking about for 2025 is that this mission statement is a guiding star. Yes. Okay, so think about this. When we feel like we are...

We have multiple options on the table. We don't know which decision to make or which way to go. We should be able to refer back to our guiding star to say, does this align and are we fitting in with what we set out to do for the reason we are even spending time trying to build this business? And so the key component to that, Chelsea, are what? What's like the key phrase in there that stands out to you?

In our mission statement? Okay. So for one, provide resources to small business owners. So if we are trying to decide if we're going to do something, we look back at that mission statement and say, okay, well, is this a resource that a small business owner would actually want? Right. Well, and for me, all right, so...

I'm glad that that is a very, like Chelsea saying, does our target audience, the people that we are here to serve, small businesses, do they even need or want what we're putting out there? If the answer is no, we don't need to waste our time doing it, right? The other part to me that stands out is that grow their confidence in managing their marketing in-house. That says a couple different things to me. For one, it says...

we don't want to do your marketing for you. So therefore it kind of shapes the products and the services that we sell, right? Is this empowering somebody to continue to do their marketing, right? Like we're not out here saying, give us, you know, let us do all this stuff for you. We're saying, are we able to teach them how to do this on their own? Because we know that's going to be more impactful. And then the other part of that is,

grow their confidence in their marketing. That helps us to identify the type of content that we create. If we are creating reels or videos, does this give somebody at the end of them watching us for 60 seconds, do they say like, oh, wow, I learned something new and now I feel more confident in the realm of marketing? Perhaps I didn't know that or perhaps now I feel more knowledgeable about it. So these are all the things that

for us, does our target audience want it? We say who our target audience is. We say, you know, is it something that they want? We say, how are we approaching this? We want to give them something. We want to give them confidence. And then it gives us a means to it. We want to be sure that we empower them to do it on their own. Also,

This is our new mission statement. This is our mission statement because I am here with Vivian. The mission statement Vivian had when she was the season marketer on her own is very different from what it is now.

Yeah. I mean, I think when I started the whole thing, it was just to provide marketing resources to small business owners. It was that simple. I didn't have to think much further than that because like you said, it was a one-man operation. And also, my business wasn't fully fledged out in my head. And I don't know if you as a small business owner maybe feel this way, but it's like as you know more about your target audience, as you get those reps...

OK, you have to get reps in before you start to feel like you're you're like, oh, OK, I finally kind of feel like I know which way I want to steer myself and where my business fits. Right. It's 100 percent OK to do that. You guys like it. You know, I get it. Everyone wants the polished version of stuff. But the truth is that a business and I've I've said this to Chelsea before. It's almost like a business is its own person.

Okay. And that's how you need to treat it. I need to respect the business that I've made. I need to be sure that I'm giving it attention. I need to be sure that I'm very strategic in how I want to navigate this. And so a mission statement does help you with that. So I'm hoping that you're starting to see as we're talking through this, how that can be extremely useful. And if you don't have

mission statement yet, we encourage you that in 2025, you sit down and you give some serious thought to this because it can help you with a lot of the decision making and a lot of the maybe service expansion or product expansion that you want to do in the future. And I'm going to take it a step further. If you already have a mission statement,

Go back and look at it. Is that still your mission? Is that what you're still doing? You don't have to say, oh, I've strayed away from my mission. Let me get back in line. No. Say, you know what? My business has grown. It has evolved. It's changed. I'm going to change my mission because I like where I am right now.

And I want my mission to reflect what I'm trying to do with my small business. And I will say, like, I have homework as a small business owner because whenever we did, Chelsea and I bounced a couple ideas off of, we came up with, okay, this is going to be our mission, our vision statement. I now have to go in and I have to update our website. I haven't done that yet. I know I need to because through our website, it should be a reflection of

of what our new mission and vision statement are. And so I'm well aware of it. And I will first quarter of 2025, probably within the next two weeks, I need to get on that and be sure that our online presence reflects that even something as simple as like I was thinking the other day, we need to go in and just kind of update our social profiles.

to reflect that, right? So maybe on our Facebook page in the description, I need to go update that. On our Instagram description, maybe I need to update that. So it does require, like you said, Chelsea, if your business has grown, if you're reflecting back, if you're updating a mission statement, if you're getting more granular with it, and now just be sure that you're going back and you're checking all

all of that front facing to the consumer stuff that could make a difference in the way you appear and if that aligns with what you're telling them. You know what we keep hearing from you fellow SOBs? Small owned businesses. Yes, small owned businesses. You guys are so overwhelmed with your marketing. And we totally get that.

you didn't start your bakery or your boutique store or your jewelry business to become full-time marketers or content creators or ad designers marketing can feel really overwhelming oh yeah then you sobs try to go figure it out because that's what you do you google stuff watch videos and end up spending hours trying to figure it out only to sometimes end up more confused this is

my full time job. And trust me, the way marketing is talked about in the World Wide Web can be really misleading. And let's not even talk about trying to hire an agency for help. It's daunting. They don't know your small business like you do. And so they're not as effective. And let's not even talk about the cost. We understand why a lot of you SOBs feel ready to give up. And that's why we even bothered to create the seasoned marketer.

That's also why we started the SOB community. We wanted to create something practical and affordable for people who can't or simply don't want to outsource their marketing. Right. So for $50 a month, members can get free downloads and templates, step-by-step tutorial videos, a weekly live Q&A call with both of us, marketing professionals and other SOBs.

you also become a part of a supportive community to bounce ideas off of. It's like having a boardroom of like-minded individuals and marketing professionals where you can talk through all of your marketing questions without having to pay boardroom marketing agency prices.

So if you're tired of wasting time trying to figure it all out on your own or spending money on things that don't work, join us over at the SOB community. We'll help you turn your marketing stress into marketing success. And hey, it's just $50 a month. So click the link in the description to join and we can't wait to see you in the SOB community. Now back to the episode. Well, Vivian, do you want to then explain what your vision is?

All right, so remember we said that mission is your guiding light. It is the stuff that is going to help you get granular on what you're doing now.

vision is your future. I like to call it the big pie in the sky. Okay. And when Chelsea and I set out to redo our vision statement, I told her I kind of wanted it to be, I don't want to say ridiculous. It's not ridiculous, but I wanted it to, to be big because I do think that a vision is something that you're thinking, if I could have anything in this world on what, um,

my legacy or my impact could be, what would that look like for my business? Right. And so, Chelsea, what what did we agree on our vision, our new vision statement? Sure. So our new vision statement is to create opportunities for every SOB, small business, to prosper. Yeah. And I think and listen, you might be thinking, well, that's just very oversimplified.

Yeah. That's the point. It is. And when you kind of stop to think about if I'm a small business, well, our small business,

What impact or legacy do we want to leave? It's that, that we create an opportunity for every small business to be successful, to actually be in business, y'all. Because I hate to tell you, every time I read one of those darn statistics about how many businesses go out of business in the first three years, the first five years, the first 10 years,

It makes my head want to explode because I'm like, if Chelsea and I can do anything to just keep one business, you know, actually profitable, then our mission is done. And it's not for lack of maybe them. It's not, well, it could just be they just don't know what they don't know, right? Yeah.

And so our resources, what Chelsea said earlier about our mission, the stuff we provide is all going to help to do that. Yes. So there are two ways you can think about this. You can think mission is now, vision is the future. Or you could think vision is what we want to accomplish a future desired state. It's an ultimate goal. And your mission is how we're going to accomplish that.

Right. So vision could be grandiose. And then mission is the how am I on the daily going to go about delivering on that vision? How am I going to make that big change?

grandiose gesture, idea, and actual reality. And it's going to be through chipping away slowly at this, right? So how are we going to create opportunities for every SOB to prosper? We're going to do that by providing resources to small business owners that grow their confidence in managing their marketing in-house.

I love it. Yeah. I love it. Wow, we're so good at marketing. So what I hope the big takeaway is here is that

You know, in theory, I know a lot of people know about mission and vision statements. Maybe they don't know how to go about like writing them, but they know that they have a place in businesses because in a marketing plan, they always tell you to write a mission and vision statement. The thing is, I want to tell you that in practicality.

It actually is extremely useful, y'all. And I've seen it on both ends. I've seen businesses, not going to name names, that don't have a mission and vision. And when I tell you, it's like herding cats. If you want to give your team a gift, I don't care how big the team is. They could be one person. It could be 200 people. If you want to give them a gift, give them the gift of knowing what they

they are doing something for. Okay. Like it is easier for me to show up to

to work for you, if I understand what your purpose is, and if I see day to day that the decisions you are making and the stuff that we are doing actually aligns with that purpose, that's what I like, right? Then I want to be a part of your company. I want to be a part of your business, of the organization, because it makes me feel good to see it coming to fruition. And I know I'm a part of that. But if you don't have a mission or a vision, it's

and people are just coming in, it becomes this whole like thing of like, you guys don't have a, um,

you're not all looking in the same direction. Yes. And it gets very hard. That's where you start to get a lot of these little things where people are arguing about stuff and this and that. It's because then their personal stuff takes over what the big idea or vision of the company is. Well, and it's also going to help with decision-making, not just for your employees, but also for yourself, like as the small business owner yourself,

Like we were talking about earlier, do we want to do this? Well, does it align with our mission?

If it doesn't, then that's not an opportunity we want to take on. Yeah. And I'll tell you, having, I mean, you know, I've been in the workforce a long time. I'm not going to age myself, even though I did just have a birthday. But having been in the workforce a long time, one of the best examples or conversations that I ever had with a CEO at the time who he was just precious to me, he told me, he said,

You know, I want to give you authority to be able to make decisions on your own. And he said, as long as your decision is always aligned with the vision of what this company or the mission of this company is,

I'm going to be more understanding of like if you've made a mistake, right? As long as you were trying to do the right thing. Like if I were to go out on my own and for whatever reason I had to make the decision quick, if it's – we used it as an example with like a patient experience in healthcare, okay? If a patient's irate and you're trying to – as your role in the organization, you're trying to help them and –

let's say you make a decision, you're like, okay, here's the game plan we're going to do for you. If maybe you go back and it doesn't exactly align with what your superior would have done and they're like, that probably wasn't the right thing. But you say, here was my thought process. If our mission is this, my thought process was to do this and this because I wanted to deliver on what the company's about.

I mean, yeah, they'll be like, that was the wrong decision. But at the end of the day, that's and that's what he always told me. He's like, as long as you are doing what in the best interest of what we're aligned to do as a company, then I can't really like.

Not that he would get on to me about stuff, but he would say, I'm more prone to understand your decision because at least then it gives you a guiding light for that. The last part of it too, Chelsea, and one of the biggest reasons that I think a mission and vision statement is so important to a small business is that it really does help with the marketing. Okay. And you know this better than anyone, Chelsea, because you're doing social media stuff day in and day out. It

It is so much easier to craft content, create videos, put information out there. You know, if you guys are doing commercials, whatever it is, it's easier to craft that messaging when you have a clear perspective on what your mission is, right? Yeah. What is the purpose? What am I trying to do with my business?

That's what your social media should be about. I mean, there are other parts of social media marketing, and let's not get into the nitty gritty about it because that's not what this episode is about. But...

Yes, everything that you do should relate back to your mission and your vision. So your marketing is going to be that much easier because you have a very clear understanding of what you're trying to do. Absolutely. Okay, y'all, let's go ahead and do the TLDL. Too long, didn't listen. If you are here because you clicked on the chapter because you don't have time to listen to this entire episode,

that's totally fine. When you get the chance, go back and listen to our full conversation. It will help make this a little more understandable and

Sometimes mission and vision can be confusing for people. But today we talked about how important it is to have a mission and vision statement as a small business owner. Your vision statement is going to be the future. It's your pie in the sky statement, what you want to achieve in a perfect world. Your mission is now. It's how you are going to

reach your vision. Your mission is your guiding star. And of course, it's going to help with your marketing and help you make better commercials, ads. It's just going to help you with your marketing altogether. Why do you want a mission vision statement? For one, it's going to help you with your purpose. It's going to help you understand your small business better. And it's going to help with decision making, not only for you, but also your employees, if you have any. Also,

Also, if you already have a mission and vision, you might want to go back and revisit them because businesses change. Maybe you've grown out of those statements. And hey, if you guys are thinking, there's no way I'm going to be able to come up with my own mission and vision statement, join our SOB community. Okay.

Okay, y'all. We actually do weekly Zoom calls for an hour on there where we have community members come in. They can ask any questions that they want about their small business. We can help you craft a mission and vision statement for your business if that's something that you are needing. So $50 a month, you get access to our portal and all of the videos and information. Nice little conversation hub there where you can ask questions, post comments, all that good stuff. But

But I encourage you to go take a look at that school.com slash SOB. And y'all go be the best SOB you can be.