Posted on: Wednesday, September 15, 2004

It's possible to make dreams come true

By Rhonda Abrams

How do you make your dreams come true?

Dreams may seem an unusual topic for my column on entrepreneurship. After all, I always stress the practicality, the reality, of running your own business. But most successful small businesses start with a dream. What makes the difference between those who just dream and those who make their entrepreneurial dreams come true?

The other day I realized that I'm a dreamer. Almost every day, I spend time imagining my future. But while I'm a frequent visitor to the future, I don't take up permanent residence there. I try to use my hopes and dreams as a target to shoot for, a guide for my path in my everyday business life.

That's one of the first things you have to recognize about your dreams: they can be an escape from your current reality or a foundation for a new reality. You cannot change your life or your business unless you can imagine a new reality.

But if you act on dreams without examining them, those fantasies can distract you from more achievable goals. For instance, if you dream of having a bigger house, faster car or more luxurious lifestyle, then it's easy to be seduced by get-rich-quick schemes. But these drain your money and time away from more achievable goals, such as going back to school or getting a better job.

So if you want to make your dreams come true, it's necessary to develop what I call the "discipline of dreams." You have to be able to clarify your dreams, evaluate them and move them from the stage of imagination to action.

Let's define a "dream scale" — from the least-achievable stage of dreaming to the most achievable:

• Fantasy: Concepts that are impossible to achieve or highly unrealistic. Don't get me wrong — I understand that it can be useful to have fantasies that make life more bearable, especially when you're not in a position to change. Just don't act on them!

• Dream: Concepts that are potentially achievable but where only the positive aspects are seen. Many people have their own idea of their dream business; my neighbors want to own a charming bed-and-breakfast in a quaint New England seaport. Is this a fantasy? Not exactly. After all, some people do run delightful B&Bs on Cape Cod. The reality, however, is that it's very difficult.

• Vision: Concepts that are achievable, at a stage where the downsides and difficulties come into focus. At the "vision" stage, you're willing to challenge your assumptions. You're not afraid to understand the costs, limitations, work required, as well as your chances of success.

• Goals: Specific, realistic objectives. At the goal stage, you start to give yourself clear, practical targets for achieving your vision. You understand how much you can — and cannot — achieve, and you begin to put numbers and dates to your ambitions.

• Plans: A step-by-step outline of how you're going to achieve your goals. This is truly where you figure out how to make your vision — your goals — a reality. You set action items, milestones and detailed activities. And then you go to work!

In my company, I always start our annual planning sessions the same way — by brainstorming wild ideas and discussing big goals for our future. But that's only the first hour of a three-to-five day process. We spend the rest of the time challenging and prioritizing our goals, then devising a detailed plan for achieving them. If we didn't, our aspirations would still be dreams.

Instead, we're busy making our dreams come true.

Rhonda Abrams is president of The Planning Shop, publisher of books and other tools for business planning.