*** Subscribe to The Old Schoolhouse Magazine ***
Click here to see the latest promotions from TOS!

Small Business Saturdays: Goal-Setting for Your Business

With January 1st right around the corner, it’s that time of year when we all become a little more reflective. Whether it’s a New Year’s resolution, a new diet, an exercise plan… we’re all thinking about what we hope to accomplish in our lives over the next year.

What about your business? This is the perfect time of year to contemplate the past 12 months and how far your company has come. Don’t just reflect on the past, look ahead to the future.

 

If you don’t know where you are going or where you want to be, how will you be able to measure your achievement? Goal-setting is vital for the success of any business, no matter what the size.

 

I encourage you to sit down with a pen and paper and set goals. If you have a family business, talk this over as a family. Where do you want to be in three months, six months, a year? What about two years or five years down the road?

 

Set specific goals which you feel are reachable and then set some goals which might seem out-of-reach right now, but that you can at least start working toward. After setting these goals, write out a basic plan to achieve them. Save this paper in an important place (maybe even display it on your wall or bulletin board by your desk as a constant reminder and motivator!) and review it often.

 

My husband and I sat down almost a year ago and did this for our small business. At the time, our business was just getting off the ground and many of the goals we set seemed like a very long shot. We went ahead and set them anyway. My motto has always been, “Better to aim high, than to not aim at all!”

 

A few weeks ago, we reviewed our business goals and were shocked to find we had reached every single one of them!  In some cases, we had even gone above and beyond what seemed like a far stretch a year ago. Wow! It was amazing to look back and see how motivational a simple listing of goals on a piece of paper had been for us.

 

Just think...we would never have realized how much our business had grown had we not set these goals in the first place!

 

~Crystal Paine

Marketing Manager

The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, LLC

Comments

Untitled Comment

7:40 PM, Dec. 25, 2005, posted by TOSPUBLISHER

Amen! Sometimes it's amazing to watch what happens over the length of a year. Thanks for sharing this; very encouraging!