For anyone that may be thinking a Vision Board is a bit too “woo-woo” for me. Consider how athletes and high achieving professionals use visualisation to get the very best performance out of themselves. Running through mental simulations over and over again in their heads for a medal winning performance or a winning presentation.
A Vision Board is simply is a tangible form/physical version of visualisation.
A Vision Board is a way to help you see your goals – using images, quotes, and symbols that have meaning to you and that represent something you want to achieve.
Creating a Vision Board for Becoming a Cafe Owner
If you don’t yet have a cafe of coffee shop business. A Vision Board helps you get focused on what exactly you want for yourself and your future cafe.
Look for images, words, and other items that represent your ideal day as a cafe owner, what your perfect customer would be like, and your ultimate dream cafe – its location, the interior style, what you serve, etc.
Cafepreneur Vision Board Inspiration –
- Location – Suburb (close to home, where you’d like to live, where your perfect customer is)
- Location – Environment (tourist area, beachside, park view, village square, CBD main street)
- Property – Accomodation (dining area, outdoor seating, garden, bathrooms, kitchen, storage, office)
- Property – Facilities (bar, booths, shade umbrellas, outdoor heaters, counters, fridges)
- Interior – Design (layout, colours, vibe)
- Interior – Furnishings (chairs, tables, windows, lighting, artwork)
- Interior – Entertainment (wi-fi, TV, music system, vending machines, pinball, games)
- Business – Customers (wealth, occupation, lifestyle, family)
- Business – Staff (skills, experience, uniforms, attitude, hierarchy)
- Business – Suppliers (brands, rates, inventory, deals)
- Business – Finances (loans, POS system, banking, payroll, bookkeeping, taxes)
- Business – Admin (contracts, rosters, orders, processes)
- Service – Dining (cutlery, crockery, glassware, menus, napkins, condiments)
- Service – Menu (food, drinks, serve sizes, prices, specials, dietary needs)
- Service – Waste (recycling, packaging, expiry dates, collection)
- Ownership – Lifestyle (work hours, daily tasks, responsibilities, holidays)
- Ownership – Money (profits, investments, superannuation)
For images, looking through old magazines, your camera gallery or online with a Google Image search, or stock photo sites, like Pexels.com (and other stock image websites).
Concentrate on gathering images, trinkets and quotes that evoke good feelings. Do they make you happy? Does it bring to mind anything you’ve dreamed about before when you think about owning a cafe?
Creating a Vision Board for Cafe Business Success
A Vision Board is also a great way to keep you focused on goals and business success … it increases the likelihood that you’ll achieve your goals when you have one handy.
The things to keep in mind for a Goals and Success oriented Vision Board are –
- It is your Vision Board, so there is no right or wrong way to express your goals and aspirations. The opinions of others are irrelevant!
- Think big. Your vision board should avoid having things you can easily achieve next week or next month. It is not a ‘to do’ list of pictures! Focus on the bigger goals you want to achieve in three to five years.
- Your Vision Board will work best when you give it your attention for a few minutes every day.
Cafe Success Vision Board Inspiration –
- Financial – Profits (annual income, reinvestment rate, gross profit, net profit, working capital, debt to equity ratio)
- Financial – Numbers (revenue, daily net, sales by category, revenue by staff, top selling, POS reports, break even point)
- Financial – Costs (overheads, CoGS, supplies, leases, rentals, prime costs, labour costs)
- Business – Inventory (turnover ratio, cycle time, losses, shrinkage, waste, range, brands)
- Business – Facility (revenue per seat, revPASH, table turnover, time per table turn, return on investment, payback period, occupancy rate)
- Business – Marketing (engagement rates, social responsibility score, return on advertising spend, amplification rate)
- Business – Staff (employee satisfaction, retention, performance, productivity rates, absenteeism rates, staff turnover ratio, cost per hire, employee training costs)
- Business – Performance (menu item profitability, contribution margin, efficiency rates, compliance rates, sales quotas)
- Sales – Customers (lifetime value, churn, acquisition cost, wallet share, headcount, tips tally, average customer revenue, repeat purchase rate)
- Sales – Reputation (ratings, satisfaction, loyalty, brand recognition, unavailability rate)
- Investment – Growth (business capabilities, diversification, size of premises, number of locations, franchising, partnerships, financing availability, market share, competition, automation, processes, patents, trademarks, business acquisitions)
Tips for Making a Cafe Vision Board
Depending on how dynamic you want your Vision Board to be, you have some options.
You can choose to glue the items you collect on to a large piece of cardboard or you may prefer to use ‘blu-tack’ (or removable mounting tape) to put up your items on a blank wall or whiteboard.
The glued cardboard option is something that is easy to move around and can even be framed to hang as a creative feature.
Using removable tape to assemble your Vision Board gives you greater freedom to change it as you find alternative images, quotes, etc that have greater emotional power. This allows you to evolve your Vision Board as you get clearer about what you want.
Once you have your first Vision Board you need to place it somewhere you’ll see it often. That might be, where you stand around while making a cup of tea or coffee. It could be behind and above your computer screen at your desk. It might even be near your main entry door, so you see it every time you come and go from where you live.
If the idea of having your Vision Board on display for anyone to see, makes you nervous. Then you can also make a digital Vision Board (using canva.com) that you save and download to use as your phone home screen.
A Vision Board is a great way to free up space for thinking about different things, by getting your dreams, ideas and aspirations out of your head and into the real world.
Putting your Vision Board somewhere you can see and experience it often, gives you the emotional push to discuss, plan and put into action things that will make it real.