Business Strategic Planning

A must have for Small Business Owners

Hey Small Business Owners!

As you navigate this journey with your business, it’s always important to have goals and plans set ahead for you, as a way to benchmark your success. The way you should continue to look at your business is a non-stop reach for greater success. This might not be scaling your business, but having set goals for different areas can really help you motivate yourself, your employees AND your loyal customer base. Let’s talk about it!

Setting goals: Why it’s important

Setting goals is crucial for small business owners for many reasons. Without having goals, you aren’t able to see your benchmark success, and can even be putting in the effort into areas, products, or customers that aren’t the right fit. By sitting down to set goals, quarterly, annually, or bi-annually you can have a clear picture of what the future looks like for you. Consider goals as a gateway to:

1. Providing Direction and Focus:

2. Enhancing Your Own Motivation and Commitment:

3. Establishing Accountability

4. Driving Business Growth and Development:

5. Improving Employee Happiness, Motivation, and Success:

6. Managing and Mitigating Risks

Do I need goals if I don’t want to scale?

Even if building your business to become larger isn’t in your direct line of vision, it’s always important to consider the other factors of success for your business. Do you want profits? Do you want good reviews on your products? Would you like a returning customer base? All of these questions should be one answer: Yes. And in order to do so, you must continue to put your best foot forward and think strategically.

I already know I want to make X amount of money… isn’t that my goal?

Having a number you want to reach whether it’s profits or customers is a great benchmark but there are goals along the way that you should also set in order to reach this. Consider answering these 5 questions that helped guide me through the Goldman Sachs Black in Business program: