When starting your own business, or to keep your existing business current and profitable, planning and goal-setting are the keys to success.
If you don't have attainable and concrete goals and a plan to make them happen, just like in life, no-one will make things happen for you, said Michael Palmer, a Toronto-based business coach and founder of Beyond Breakthroughs, who specializes in coaching small and medium size business owners. "My philosophy is, create the future now and put together the pieces to make that actually happen," he said.Palmer said there are many types of short-term goals business owners could be making depending on the type of business, but typically, goals include growing the business and their sales.However, there is a strategy to implementing goals, and it starts with identifying what a person wants by them writing it down. Palmer said once you've done that, you need to identify what's important about the things you've written down. This will give you insight as to what is of value to you."People don't do things unless they get some value from it," Palmer said.Then you have to ask yourself where you want to be in the future, what your vision is, what your long-term goals are."It always has to come back to some future destination because why people become clear when they have a future destination is it connects the dots between where they are and where they are going and creates focus," he said.Finally, Palmer said you have to decide which one of these goals is most important, and identify the top three things that are going to get you to where you want to be in 12 to 18 months. This is a necessary process because without a well-thought-out plan, or by making short-term goals blindly, Palmer said you could end up way off track instead of where you actually want your goals to get you to."It can be a month, it can be two weeks, short-term goals can be anything, but we always have to have something (a goal) further out to know where we're heading," he said.Once you've established your goals, it's a good time to include you employees in your plans. Having regular meetings to get their input makes them a part of your goals and the company goals; they become an integral part in making your business successful."As a business owner, if you can't communicate and delegate and have people fulfill on that vision, you're going to be working a lot of long days," he said.While setting goals begins with a thought process, achieving goals is an action process. Palmer said you have to do the initial work to get things mapped out so you have a clear road to where you need, and want, to be."When they've done this, they know where they're heading to in the future and they know why they're doing it, so there is an internal motivation to take small actions to lead to a bigger outcome," he said.