How to create a painted picture for your business future

Executive overview

New Year's resolutions fail because they lack a vivid destination. The painted picture is a one-page written document describing exactly what your company looks, feels, and acts like at a specific future date — written as if you're already there.

It does not describe how to get there. That comes later. The picture comes first.

A clear destination separates the team members who believe from those who don't — and that alignment is the point.

Origins and purpose

• Brian Scudamore created the first painted picture in 1997 on a dock near Vancouver, after falling into a "doom loop" comparing his $1M company to peers.
• He pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote what 1-800-GOT-JUNK could look like in five years — specific cities, culture, brand feel, Oprah Winfrey Show.
• On re-reading it, he believed it. That belief was the signal it was working.
• The document split the company: some were energised, others left. Both outcomes were useful.
• It became the company's primary alignment tool.

How to create one

• Find an inspirational location — water, nature, a restaurant — anywhere that frees your mind from operational thinking.
• Write in declarative language: "We will be in the top 30 metros by end of 2003" — not "we hope to" or "we're going to try."
• Describe what the company looks like, feels like, and how it acts — culture, brand, people, scale.
• Keep it to one page, double-sided. It is always a written document, not a visual collage.
• Avoid photos or images: you want readers to picture themselves in the vision using their own imagination.
• Do it alone, or with a coach asking questions to draw out the picture. Questions like: "How many people are in your company? What are customers saying when you're not in the room?"

Why no "how"

• As soon as you ask how, doubt enters: too hard, too expensive, too far.
• The painted picture locks in the where. The how is figured out over time once the destination is fixed.
• Paul Guy set a $10M goal from $3M. Scudamore couldn't see how either — but Guy found the path (a year-long radio campaign) because he believed in his destination.

Time frame and format

• Three to five years is the sweet spot: far enough to be ambitious, close enough to feel real.
• Grounding technique: imagine how old you and your children will be at that date. That concreteness unlocks broader visioning.
• O2E Brands creates a painted picture annually for each of its four companies.
• A copywriter can tighten the language, but the voice must stay the founder's own — people follow a leader's vision, not polished marketing copy.

Relationship to other planning tools

• The painted picture is not a strategic plan. It sits upstream of three-to-five-year chess moves, one-year plans, and quarterly priorities.
• It is closer to a BHAG in scope, but more vivid and human — culture, feeling, identity, not just metrics.
• Personal and business pictures should be integrated: if the vision doesn't resonate at a personal level, commitment breaks down under pressure.
• Cameron Herold (COO who helped scale from $2M to $106M) called his version a "vivid vision" — the label doesn't matter, the practice does.

Sharing and using the picture

• Share it widely — with employees, franchise partners, recruits, and customers.
• Use it as a recruitment filter: does this person light up or check out?
• The founder sets the picture; input from the leadership team shapes refinement, but core details don't change just because others can't yet see them.
• Scudamore's O2E Brands template is available at O2Ebrands.com/painted-picture.