Most work days find you 'working in your business', a phrase that describes primarily doing revenue-producing activities. Often omitted, but of equal importance, is creating the time to contemplate and visualize a global view of your business. This is referred to in the phrase 'working on your business.' The reason most producers never play a bigger game is that they don't make the time to work on their business, and thus rarely capture new opportunities.

So as you are creating your blueprint for a great production year, please plan on taking visionary days. In the beginning it should at least be a full day with your team. Eventually, as your success grows, I suggest taking one quarterly. Once you have experienced the power of the first one, you may want to immediately schedule the next one six months out. You may glean so much value from them that you choose to do them quarterly. Our company does a two-day retreat each year in quarter one, then three half-day visionary meetings, one per quarter the rest of the year. These visionary days have transformed our business.

There are several advantages to creating the time to work on your business. The first is as a reflective meditation to forensically scan your business and take a thirty-thousand foot snapshot. This big picture helps you assess what is working, and become aware of what is not working. It allows for creative course corrections to flow from your team to address truths that are often easily overlooked. The next advantage is that it helps you spot new possibilities that otherwise go unseen, designing an action plan to pragmatically actualize those opportunities.

The third advantage is that scheduling visionary days break the grind. It is the self-defeating pattern many producers fall into, in which the same habitual tasks are repeatedly done, creating a negative tension and underlying emotional disdain in your practice. Grinding always lead to scarce results. Visionary days renew your mental energy and rejuvenate your emotions, re-booting mission-driven passion back into your game.

Because visualization is a spiritual discipline, you get to see your business from the highest plane of potential, which of course is the spiritual realm. From this rare perspective you receive a macro view of your business and your life. You simultaneously see the past, the present and the future! Can you even imagine how beneficial seeing the future of your industry might be? How is this possible?

Imagine you're picnicking in the park with your family on a nice summer day. You're making a cup of coffee when you accidently drop a sugar cube on the ground. You notice an ant exit its hole and run towards the sugar cube. It pauses halfway between the hole and the sugar…in that moment you notice something amazing. You can see its past (the ant hole), its present (the halfway point) and its future (the sugar cube) because you are witnessing it from such a high vantage point relative to the ant.

Though this is a metaphor, it describes the way in which higher consciousness exercises help you see future possibilities and then act NOW to actualize them. This higher vantage point is the spiritual realm, which so few entrepreneurs ever access or utilize. Every great spiritual or scientific breakthrough occurred in this way. The great entrepreneurs practice honing this skill until they become so proficient that they shift from reacting to market drift to creating market trends.

A similar phenomenon can happen to your business when you take Visionary Days, especially with your team. Do not underestimate the power of the team, regardless of the role anyone plays on it; we each have our unique genius. When our company has visionary days, some of our best business ideas came from other people on the team.

In summary, visionary days empower you to;

1.       Assess threats typically ignored, and then creatively resolve them

2.       Identify opportunities often overlooked and cultivate action plans to capture them

3.       Escape the Grind

4.       Renew mentally

5.       Rejuvenate emotionally

6.       Authentically re-boot your mission with a new, clear 'track to run on'

7.       Glimpse future trends from a higher consciousness that competitors have no vision to see

8.       Cultivate team work and empower contribution from unexpected sources

9.       You learn to create markets instead of only reacting to them

Please go into your calendar now, and schedule your visionary days. If you earn more than $100,000 yearly, I suggest having at least three if not four, one per quarter. If you earn less than $100,000 yearly income, I suggest doing two visionary days, one in the beginning of the year, and one mid-year, perhaps in July. If you have a team, include them, but also consider inviting some creative friends or business people to join you for a few hours so they can share their insights. People love to be asked to act as a resource in this way because it makes them feel important. If you do not have a team, think about the business people or other advisors you'd most like to share this kind of day with, and consider inviting them to do so as a study group.

Another term for this kind of imaginative planning is creative visualization; it is a high-leverage spiritual and business discipline. There are two main aspects of creative visualization;

1.       Creating the time to work on your business by scheduling Visionary Days throughout the year.

2.       Daily rehearsal in your power hour to successfully visualize that day's activities prior to taking action.

Doing creative visualization on a daily basis is a simple but powerful skill. It is the habit of looking at the planned events in your upcoming day and mentally rehearsing them going smoothly and successfully. Imagine you're sitting in your power hour, and you have an important presentation you're scheduled to do later in the day. You might visualize;

1.       Driving to the meeting without incident or delay and being early.

2.       Walking in and seeing your contact smile and cheerfully shake your hand.

3.       Using your technology without breakdowns or challenges

4.       Explaining your offer eloquently and answering all their questions skillfully and thoroughly

5.       The person receiving great value and saying 'yes'.

6.       The client willingly referring you to several great new prospects

People are often unconscious to the fact that we constantly practice creative visualization. We are unfortunately in the habit of visualizing the negative instead of the positive, which then often manifests. Golfer Jack Nicklaus revealed that one of his success secrets was creative visualization. He would visualize every shot before he actually hit the ball, and was convinced that it made him a better golfer. Nicklaus won more major golf championships than any other golfer in history.

Action Step:

Begin practicing creative visualization in your morning power hour.