The other day while wearing my lawyer hat, I was conducting an intake session with a potential client. During these sessions, I ask some pretty non-typical lawyer questions. Things like:

• What are your goals? Short-term? Long-term?
• What’s your timeline for meeting these goals?
• What does success look like for you?
• How will you know when you’ve attained success?
• What results will your see when you meet your goals?
• How will you feel when you reach your goals?

In this particular session, my questions threw off the potential client. She wasn’t expecting or prepared to answer them.

But I ask these questions for a specific purpose:

I can’t know how to prioritize your legal needs unless I can see the big picture of where your business is going.

For example, she had contacted me about the usual:

• Forming a LLC/corporation
• Filing a trademark
• Getting ready to hire an employee
• Assuring that she was in compliance with some industry laws

If we need to tackle those tasks and what order we do them in, drastically differs depending on her big picture goals. And since I’m also cash flow sensitive I try to factor that into our decision-making process as well.

The same is true for you.

The first step to securing your foundations should be becoming clear on where you are taking your business. You need to know exactly where you are taking your business and what ruler you are going to measure yourself against.

Because you have to know where you are going to decide which foundations are okay and which need to be shored up to support your growth.

Is this work hard? Yep, it’s hard for a couple reasons. This work requires us to:

• Dig in and figure out what we want
• Admit what we think we deserve
• Put down on paper our hopes and dreams, which if they don’t happen can depress us

So I challenge you to take out a notebook and pour yourself a beverage and answer the following questions:

• What does your business look like in five years?
• What does success look like for you?
• How will you know when you’ve reached your version of success?
• What does success feel like?
• What is the biggest block in reaching that success that you can control? That you feel like is out of your control
• What changes will you need to make to your business to get there?
• To reach success is there things you need to add, remove, or keep doing?

These questions will help you develop your 5-year vision. And I promise that doing this will provide clarity on what aspects of your business need shoring up and which are okay for the time being.
Did you learn anything surprising when doing this exercise? Which foundations of your business are holding you back? Share your experiences in the comments below.