I want you to picture two businesses.
Business one looks great on paper. Revenue goals. Growth plan. Team structure. A proper looking org chart. Fancy words in the bio. The kind of business that makes other people nod and say, “Wow, you’re doing well.”
The second one is also well run and professional, but it has been designed with a different starting point. The owner has made deliberate choices about how they want to work, what they want to prioritise, and how the business fits into their life. The days have a rhythm that suits them. Decisions feel aligned rather than forced. Success is measured in a way that makes sense to the person running it.
Both businesses work. They just work in different ways.
What tends to change over time is not your ambition. It is what you care about.
You start to see more clearly what is worth your energy, what is not, and what you want your business to support in your life.
Designing a business that feels like you is not about shrinking. It is not about playing small. It is about building on purpose.
And the way you do that is not by changing your logo or doing a planning day and calling it done. It starts with the foundations.
Values, mission, vision, then strategy.
Values are your behaviour on the busy days
Let’s start here because values are the most misunderstood.
Values are not a list of nice words you stick on a wall.
Values are what you do, and how you do it, especially when you are under pressure, running late, juggling three things at once, and someone has just thrown a curveball into your day.
Values are behaviours.
Recently, through my work with Starfish Marketing, I spent a full day with the team at RHM Law facilitating foundational business planning. Not the fluffy kind. The kind where you slow down, get clear, and talk honestly about how the business actually operates day to day.
We started with values, deliberately. Not because they look good on a website, but because they shape behaviour long before they shape strategy.
I loved the way we approached values in this planning work. We were not writing marketing lines. We were setting expectations for how RHM Law treats clients and each other, all the time. Their draft values are practical, human, and clear. Kindness, care and empathy. Legal knowledge. Communication.
These values are not fluffy, they are behavioural and are therefore useful and are designed to be embedded throughout the firm (with team feedback and buy-in).
If you want your business to feel like you, your values need to be honest.
Not what you think you should value. What you actually value.
A simple way to understand what you value in your business is to ask yourself (and your team) “When you make a decision you are proud of, what do you protect?”
It might be:
- your client’s experience
- your reputation
- your boundaries
- your people
- your time
- the quality of the work
Understanding what you’re protecting, what is most important to you helps you identify what you value the most. Your values then drive the expected behaviour of you and your people, and your clients know what to expect/experience from your business.
So, when designing a business that feels like you, start with Values. Then you can move onto working out your Mission and Vision.
Mission is what you do now
Mission and Vision get mixed up all the time, so let’s keep this simple.
Your Mission is what you do now.
It is the clearest way to explain:
- what you do
- who you do it for
- how you do it
That’s it.
RHM Law’s Mission Statements draft is a good example of keeping your Mission in the present. It is about fiercely advocating for injured people, delivering personal advice with empathy, and not settling until the best outcome is reached. That is their current work and purpose. You can really feel it.
So, for your business, your Mission is the sentence (or sentences) that keeps you steady in the work you do.
It is what helps you decide whether an opportunity fits.
It is what helps you market without sounding like everyone else, because you are not marketing a service list, you are communicating what you are here to do.
If your mission feels vague, it becomes very easy to say yes to things that do not belong in your business.
If your mission feels clear, decision making gets simpler.
Not perfect. Simpler.
Vision is where you are heading
Your Vision is your forward looking piece.
Not a revenue number. Not a target. Not a list of goals.
Your Vision is what you are intentionally building towards and what you want to be known for.
In the RHM planning work, the vision draft is about being known for understanding struggles, treating people with dignity and empathy, and clients leaving having received the best outcome possible. That is reputation and experience, and it provides direction.
A good vision makes it easier for you (and your people) to choose what to focus on, because you have a clear sense of where you are going.
It also makes it easier to stop doing things that do not fit anymore, because you are not just stopping for the sake of stopping. You are protecting the direction.
Strategy is the set of choices you are brave enough to make
After you have defined, and actually embraced, your Values, Mission and Vision, then you can build your Strategy.
And this is where I want to slow things down for a moment, because strategy is one of the most misunderstood words in business.
Strategy is not a list of tasks.
It is not a to do list.
And it is definitely not “let’s just do more things”.
Strategy is a set of choices.
It is choosing what matters most right now, and then backing those choices with your time, money and attention.
A clear strategy helps you decide what you will focus on this year, what you will leave alone, and what you will say no to, even when something looks tempting or sounds like a good idea.
Because not every good idea belongs in your business.
When your strategy is clear, it answers practical questions like:
- what work belongs here
- what work does not
- where your energy is best spent
- where you need to stop stretching yourself too thin
This is also why strategy often gets confused with activity. Being busy can feel productive, but without strategy underneath it, it is just movement.
Tweaking marketing. Changing pricing. Adding offers. Hiring. Expanding services. All of that can be useful, but only when it is in service of something bigger.
Strategy is pausing long enough to ask:
- what are we building
- how do we want this business to feel
- what are we protecting
That is why the order matters.
Values first.
Then mission.
Then vision.
Then strategy.
Lifestyle led does not mean strategy free
I need to say this clearly because it matters.
Designing a business that feels like you is not about building a business that suits your life and forgetting the business side.
It is about building both, on purpose.
Lifestyle led planning belongs inside strategy.
Because how you want to work affects everything:
- what clients you take on
- how you price
- what you deliver
- how you staff
- how you market
- how you grow, or do not grow
And yes, sometimes growth fits. Sometimes staying small fits. Sometimes the best strategy is to stay exactly the right size for what you want.
That is not a lesser choice. It is a designed choice.
A quick exercise you can actually do
If you want to start designing a business that feels like you, do this.
Step one
Write down what you want your average week to look like. Not your dream holiday week. Your average week.
- how many days you want to work
- how many meetings you want
- how much deep work time you want
- how available you want to be
- how much flexibility you need.
Step two
Write down what you want your business to be known for in one sentence. Use simple or plain words so it’s easy to understand and hard to misinterpret.
Step three
Now check your current reality against those two things.
Not to judge it, but to design from it.
Ask yourself:
- what is one thing I can protect more
- what is one thing I can simplify
- what is one thing I can stop doing because it does not belong anymore
- what is one decision I have been delaying that would make the business feel more like me
That is design work. That is strategy. And that is redefining success in real time.
Redefining success is the whole point
Remember, you get to define what success looks like for you.
Bigger is not automatically better, but different can be better.
Success might be:
- more profit with fewer clients
- more time with your family
- a team that is small and solid
- work you enjoy, with people you like
- a business that fits the season you are in
The common thread is choice.
When your values are clear, your mission is grounded, your vision is directional, and your strategy is a set of deliberate choices, your business starts to feel like it belongs to you again.
Not because it is perfect. Because it is designed.
If reading this has you nodding along, or quietly questioning a few things, that is usually a sign you are ready to be more intentional about how your business is designed.
If you are interested in exploring this properly, feel free to get in touch and let’s design your business in a way that actually feels like you.
Designing a business that feels like you FAQs
What does it mean to design a business that feels like you?
Designing a business that feels like you means building your business around your values, vision and preferred way of working, so strategy supports both performance and lifestyle.
Why are values important in business strategy?
Values guide behaviour, decision making, client selection, leadership style and long term direction, helping the business stay aligned as it grows.
Is it too late to redefine success in an established business?
No. Revisiting foundations at any stage can bring clarity, improve strategy, and realign the business with what matters most to you.
