3 Questions to Help You Find the Starting Point of Your Destination Sentence
Prefer to listen rather than read? Listen to the podcast episode covering this same topic here → Quietly Disruptive Podcast
In the last post we explored why so many founders have a direction but very few have a destination, and why that difference changes everything from your marketing to your decision making to your ability to articulate what you are building and why it matters. Today we are making that practical. I am going to share three questions that will help you find some of the ingredients you need to start shaping your own destination sentence. This is not a template because a template will always give you a templated answer and that often feels more like a box that constricts rather than creates. These questions are about finding where to start, and from there the sentence is formed, refined and tweaked until it becomes the final version that guides everything.
Bear in mind that we are talking about corners of the world here, about making changes and pinpointing the thing you are here to do, and you cannot make that kind of decision on a whim. It is intentional and intentional takes time and plenty of thinking. So keep that in mind as we go through.
Question One: If You Could Wave a Magic Wand and Have Exactly the Business and Life You Have Always Wanted, What Would It Be?
This is my favourite of the three questions because it asks you to let go of every restraint, whether self imposed, situational or imposed by the world, and to really dream. What would your life be like? What would it feel like? What would you be doing on a Tuesday afternoon? What would a Monday morning look like? Whatever random thing pops into your head, write it down before you dismiss it, because allowing yourself to dream gives you the vision that you can then reverse engineer. I am a big believer that anything is possible, but you have to have the dream first before you can figure out how to make it happen.
Apply the same thinking to your business. If you could wave a magic wand and have the clients you have always wanted, who would they be? What would you be helping them with? If you want to only work three days a week, write it down. If you want to work with clients who are purpose driven, that goes down too. If your Monday mornings start with a swim at your local pool, down that goes as well. Because what I have found is that when a founder is changing corners of the world in their business, they are also changing their personal world too. The two are interlinked. The business is you and you are the business, and the founder who walks forward is the one the business follows. We always try to keep those things separate, but when you run your own business they are not separate at all.
Question Two: Why Do You Want to Build in That Particular Space?
This question helps you to uncover the fuel and the driving force behind everything, which is the why. When you think about that magic wand version of your business, why that particular space? What is it about it that draws you in or appeals to you?
Understanding why is a huge part of finding your sentence because it uncovers why you are the one to build a business that changes that specific corner of the world. In my experience there is usually an intimate knowing at the root of it, something you have seen from the inside of an industry or a niche or a process where you know there is a better way that no one else is doing yet. You can see a gap, a crack where something can take root and thrive. It is also usually something you are really good at, an area where you have specific experience, expertise or knowledge that makes you the right person to fill that gap.
Question Three: What Changes When You Build It?
This question helps you to see the impact from the other direction. Think about that particular space you would like to be in, the one you would like to change, improve or do differently. What actually changes when you do? Imagine you could jump three years into the future after you have built a business in that space. What has changed? What does that corner of the world look like now that you are in it? What is the outcome?
This question is powerful because it moves you beyond what you do and into what happens because you did it, and that shift in perspective is often where the most important part of your destination sentence lives.
What These Three Questions Give You
The first question tells you what you want. The second uncovers why you want to build in that particular space. The third articulates what changes, what impact is made in that specific corner of the world. These are not the final sentence itself but they are the starting point from which to explore, refine and eventually arrive at the version that guides everything.
You Cannot Read the Label from Inside the Jar
Now you may be wondering what to do next, especially after the previous post where I shared that it took me around nine to twelve months to figure out my own sentence alone through a huge amount of trial and error. I do not recommend that approach at all. What I recommend is asking someone to help you, because when I did finally get help from my business coach towards the end of my long search, they could see things from the outside that I simply could not see from where I was standing. They challenged my answers in a good way, because we all know that the first answer is not usually the real one. And when I told them my answers and they reflected them back to me, it helped me to see and hear them more clearly. That was when the light bulb went off, when I realised I had had the sentence all along and just needed someone to help me bring it to the surface.
A good friend has the perfect metaphor for this: when you are stuck in a jar, you cannot read the label from the inside. You need someone on the outside to read it for you. The ingredients are already inside you. The answers to these three questions will help you start gathering them. But the final sentence, the one that becomes your North Star, often needs someone else to help you see it clearly.
So take your time with these questions. Sit with them, write down whatever comes up, and then when you have those ingredients, call in your backup. Because with support you can find your sentence, and once you have it, everything changes. I do mean everything.
About the Author: Becky Benfield Humberstone partners with Quietly Disruptive founders to build businesses that change their corner of the world, on their terms. If you started your business because you believed things could be done differently, and you're ready to make that vision real, she gets it. Based in the UK and working globally via Zoom and in person, she's done this work herself, more than once.
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