Clarity is an absolutely essential ingredient for you to achieve your full potential in business. Napolean Hill, in his classic book Think & Grow Rich, said "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve." He goes on to explain why having a clear definition of what you want to achieve is a critical factor in your success.

For business owners who truly want to be "on purpose" for success and take their business to the next level, I define "clarity" as follows:

Clarity is determining exactly what results you want to achieve and when you want to achieve them.

The key word in that definition is "exactly". If you don't make the time to define your goal in exact terms, you are not setting yourself up for success. Instead, you are setting yourself up for a guess.

That's right.

A goal that is not clearly defined will not be clearly achieved. Part of the goal may be achieved, but you will not be completely satisfied with the results unless you take the time to define the entire goal upfront.

So why is having clarity so important?

Without clarity, your business moves from place to place like a ship without a rudder. But with clarity, you run your business "on purpose" and you will create amazing results -- both for you and for your customers!

This may be best understood with an example. Several years ago I worked with a business manager named Dan who helped manage a company based in Massachusetts. Dan had some lofty ideas for what he wanted to achieve, but they were not defined in much detail. He also knew that he wanted to achieve a lot of results in a short period of time, but he didn't have a good idea of how he was going to do it.

In other words, Dan was just like many business owners and managers who I have met over the years. He wanted to accomplish a lot, but he needed help gaining clarity about his ultimate goal and his timeframe for achieving it.

The first thing I did with Dan was help coach him to identify his most important short-term goal. Once that was done, Dan and I worked together to figure out what timeframe was going to be our target for achieving this goal. And once we had clarity with our goal and the target timeline, both Dan and I felt much more confident about our chances for success.

In this case, Dan's timeframe happened to be pretty aggressive and we both were confronted with a lot of opposition from people who thought that it couldn't be done. Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. Dan reached his big goal and he reached it within the four month window that he had set for himself.

So how can you learn from Dan's success and develop clarity for your business goals? Here are some questions to get you started:

1. Remember in Step One ("Understanding") when you were asked how you measure success in your business today? Well, you need to use the answer to that question to fill in the blank below: What have you achieved in the last three months in your business in terms of _____________ ? (i.e. typical items to fill in this blank are money, profits, or new customers)

2. What one goal would you like to achieve in the next 90 days?

3. Once you achieve this goal, what do you want to do with the extra money and extra time? In other words, what do you personally get as a reward for achieving this goal?

4. Looking back, what was your best month you ever had in your business in terms of ______________? (insert your chosen measurement again in the blank, and then answer the question)

5. Can you summarize what happened that month (or that period)? In other words, what specific actions had you taken that led to those incredible results?

Let's use another example to show you just how easy this process can be. Let's pretend a woman named Cindy is the proud owner of Cindy's Teddy Bear Company, which makes custom teddy bears for children of celebrities and upper class families.

In last week's article on Understanding, Cindy wrote down that the two biggest reasons she is in business is to positively affect children's lives and to make enough money to be financially free. Cindy also thought about how she measures her success and determined that the number of customers she has is what is most important to her.

Cindy came up with the following answers to the five Clarity questions listed above:

1. In the last three months, I have gained 72 new customers.

2. I would like to get 100 new customers in the next 90 days. I have never done this before, so this is a very exciting goal for me!

3. When I reach my goal of 100 new customers, I will invest half of the profits into my personal financial freedom account and spend some of the profits on a one-week vacation to Mexico with my family.

4. In my best month ever, I gained 30 new customers.

5. During my best month, I think the biggest reason for my success was that I rolled out a marketing campaign to a local community and followed up on every lead that I received.

Great job with Step Two, Cindy! Now you're ready to move on to Step Three.

Are you starting to get the picture and see how easy it can be to develop clarity for yourself? When you focus on the above questions and answer them honestly, you will be laying the next brick in your momentum foundation.

Make some time in your schedule this week to think about your answers to these questions. And if you have a business coach today, also make the time to review your thoughts about these questions with him or her.

Getting very clear about what you want to accomplish in your business in the next 90 days is a very important step to catapult your business into massive momentum. Take action and get these questions answered today.

You'll be glad you did!