As a small business owner, you have your eye on your business’ goals, but what are your personal goals? Small business owners work long hours often sacrificing personal and family aspirations to make the business successful. But personal goals don’t have to be exclusive of the business goals! In fact, your personal goals can, and should, inform your business goals.
At the end of the time of your small business, how do you know that the business will produce the personal outcomes you want? You can take the time now to determine exactly what the personal outcomes are that you want to achieve and then lay out steps to ensure that the business will produce those outcomes. In addition, if you can identify your team members’ personal goals and align the business to achieve them, then you’ll have a fully engaged workforce.
In order to ensure your business goals support your personal goals, you’ll want to define both your personal vision and your business vision.
Start by identifying your personal vision
The first step to ensure your business goals support your personal goals is to look out 5, 10, 15, 20, even 30 or 40 years depending on your age, what kind of life do you want? Imagine where you’ll be living. What will your physical health, friendships, values, spiritual life, and family makeup be? What donations and investments will you want to make? What bucket-list activities will you want to have achieved?
It’s insightful to project the ages of your kids if you have them. If your kids are 8, 13, and 16 now, in 10 years they’ll be 18, 23, and 26. What funds will you need for college or weddings? What grandchildren will you be anticipating? How many kids will still be living with you and what remodeling will that prompt?
Another way to envision your future in a detailed way is to break your personal vision into 3 parts: what you want to BE, DO, and HAVE. Perhaps you’d like to BE a college professor or published author by the time you’re 60. What will you be DOING? Spending summers in your lake house, world travel, charity work, spending time with grandchildren, paying for their private school, or spinning off 3 other businesses? What properties, businesses, degrees, cash, and cars do you want to HAVE?
Work with your family to list all the personal goals you have at each 5- or 10-year increment and get it on paper. Now you have a clearly defined and documented personal vision… your ultimate goal.
Next identify your business vision
The next step to ensure your business goals support your personal goals is to look at your business in those same 5- or 10-year increments and determine where it needs to be in order to produce your personal outcomes. This is where your personal vision begins to inform the discussion about your business vision.
Your personal vision, for example, dictates what size and type of business you want to build or the type of customers you want to attract. For example, if you want to fund your grandkids’ college, how much cash will the business need to produce? If you want to be traveling a lot by age 55, you’ll need to have built a strong leadership team by then to run things when you’re gone. If you want to be spending more time with your spouse, the job description you create for yourself needs to be work that can be done remotely. If you want to be using more of your creative talents, you’d want to change the market you target like Bob did. Bob’s personal vision, for example, drove him to switch the target market in his manufacturing company from aerospace to metal street art.
Aligning your personal vision with your business vision
Once you’ve defined your own personal vision and once you have your business’ vision defined, you can begin to walk your team members through the same process, starting with your leaders who can, in turn, walk their team members through it.
Finally, the engine that drives your business from where it is now to where it needs to be in the future includes planning activities: defining your culture, setting goals, and agreeing on the strategies to achieve those goals. It also includes the activities you perform on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. This can all be documented on your Single Sheet Business Plan. You can maintain and adjust along the way 4 times a year by updating your Quarterly Action Plan.
Join other small business owners at the Sept 23 Growth Plan Workshop and walk away with your plan, all on a single sheet of paper. In this 6-hour group setting with other small business owners and leaders, our coaches will spend one-on-one time with you, ask you the right questions, and give you the advice you need to walk away with a completed Single Sheet Business Plan and a 90-day Action Plan to jump start it.
Register here for the next Growth Plan Workshop.
Thur., Sept. 23, 2021, 9 – 4 pm
Holiday Inn Indianapolis Airport, 8555 Stansted Dr, Indianapolis, IN 46241
Knowing you have a detailed plan in place to ensure your business goals support your personal goals are met is a blessing that extends beyond yourself. It gives you, your family, your team members, and their families peace of mind and renewed energy.
