Yesterday, I read Michael Hyatt's blog post on the 140 Character Mission Statement. In the post, he mentions the book, The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make A Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau. In his book, Guillebeau talks about defining your mission statement.
Here is an excerpt from Michael's blog --
>>Here’s what Chris says:
Let’s break down the planning process into a very simple exercise: defining the mission statement for your business (or your business idea) in 140 characters or less. 140 characters is the maximum amount of text for an update on Twitter and a good natural limit for narrowing down a concept.
It may help to think of the first two characteristics of any business: a product or service and the group of people who pay for it. Put the two together and you’ve got a mission statement:
We provide [product or service] for [customers].
Note that it’s usually better to highlight a core benefit of your business instead of a descriptive feature. Accordingly, you can revise the statement a bit to read like this:
We help [customers] do/achieve/other verb [primary benefit].
Focusing like this helps you avoid "corporate speak" and drill down to the real purpose of the business as it relates to your customers.
Here are a few examples:
If you have a dog-walking service, the feature is "I walk dogs." The benefit is "I help busy owners feel at ease about their dogs when they’re not able to be with them."
If you sell knitted hat patterns, the benefit is something like "I help people be creative by making a hat for themselves or someone close to them."
If you make custom wedding stationery, you might say, "I help couples feel special about their big day by providing them with amazing invitations.">>
After reading the post, I had to ask myself, what is my mission statement? With regards to work, my professional mission statement is
I help clients bring ideas to life by taking those ideas from concept to finish using business analysis, functional and technical design. In other words, by profession I'm a business analyst.
But, what is my personal mission statement? More specifically, what is the purpose of my blog? When I started blogging 6 years ago, my purpose was to sell digital scrapbooking papers, share scrapbooking layouts and personal experiences from my life. Over time, the blog has changed, I'm no longer selling digital scrap papers, but I'm still taking lots of photos and sharing life experiences. So, my 140 character mission statement is
I inspire/encourage people by sharing personal life experiences, experiences from others and helpful information on my blog.
What is your 140 Character Mission Statement?