If you want to be a successful entrepreneur or small business owner, it’s important to set goals. What are goals? How far ahead should you look when you set goals for yourself or your business? Let’s have a look at some of the ins and outs of goal setting and how setting goals will help you to grow a successful business.
What are Goals?
In simple terms, a goal is something you want to achieve. When you set a goal for yourself or your business, you should make the goal a SMART one. Smart is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time framed. If your goals are SMART, you will be more likely to achieve them. A goal is more than a pipe dream or a pie in the sky wish. It is something you actively work to achieve and celebrate when you achieve it.
Short-Term Goals
It is actually quite easy to set a short-term goal, especially because you can see whether you have achieved the goal quickly, which gives you the motivation to continue achieving longer-term goals. Short-term goals are goals you can expect to achieve in a few months – about three months. You may want to review your short-term goals for your business every quarter. You can even have daily goals – tasks that you need to achieve in order to achieve your longer-term goals. Most entrepreneurs will have a daily and weekly to do list. You need to make sure you are taking actions to meet your short-term, medium-term and long-term goals.
Medium-Term Goals
Medium-term goals are goals you plan to achieve between six months and two years. A medium-term goal may be broken up into several smaller goals that form the short-term goals in sequence. Medium-term goals are the goals you want your business to achieve in the next year.
Long-Term Goals
Long-term goals are the goals you want your business to achieve within three to five years. The goals are overarching goals that guide the long-term strategy of your business. An example of a long-term goal is to gain 10 per cent total market share within five years. In order to achieve this goal for your business, you will need to work towards it for the whole five years. Breaking a long-term goal into medium and short-term goals will enable you to achieve it. For example, you might say a short-term goal is to increase customer sales by 5 per cent every quarter and a medium-term goal is to find new markets that increase customers by 10 per cent every year.
Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs)
BHAGs are those goals that make even you, the entrepreneur, gasp with the breathless audacity of the concept. These are the goals that others will laugh at and tell you that your business will never be able to achieve. Yet, these are the very goals that provide the motivation to succeed. It is worthwhile setting Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (BHAGs) when you start a business and to review those BHAGs every so often. Keep your dreams alive and transform your Big, Hairy Audacious Goals into smaller goals that you can achieve step by step and you will achieve those goals in your small business. Remember that J.K. Rowling wrote the first of the Harry Potter books in a laundromat and know that working to achieve your BHAGs can work.
Reducing your Risk Exposure Goals
These goals are just as important for making your business a success as the goals that work towards achieving your dreams for your business. Exposure reduction goals give you action plans and steps to take to reduce or eliminate your risks. If you reduce your financial risks by having investments in several different areas in your personal finances, why should you not reduce your risks in the business world? Sometimes you need to consider the dual concepts of growing your business and reducing your risks and work out ways to achieve both goals at the same time.
Goal setting is essential for any successful entrepreneur or small business owner. You need to set short-term to long-term goals for your business. Don’t forget those Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals to really rocket the business into the big leagues. You also need to consider goals that will enable you to reduce or eliminate the risks of running your business.
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