How to Prioritise Your Goals as Your Business Grows

For any business, to prioritise goals are important, but your goals are likely to change as you grow from a small to mid-sized or large business. If you learn good goal-setting habits early on in the life of your business, this will help you adapt as your organisation starts to scale up.

 

Short-Term and Long-Term Goals

It’s always useful to have a variety of both short-term and long-term goals. Right now, you’re probably thinking mostly in the short-term. You want your business to grow. You need to grow your list or social media following; you have specific sales goals you need to reach; you want to launch your new product.

But what happens once you reach this short-term goal? You may find yourself adrift wondering what to tackle next. This is why it’s important to look to the long-term as well.

Think about where your organisation will be in five or ten years. What does success look like years down the road? What will be different then versus now?

Although you should focus on just one short-term goal at a time, keep a list of long-term goals as well to clarify the direction you want your business to go.

 

Think Small

When prioritising goals right now, don’t be afraid to think small. In fact, it’s a good idea to set small, relatively easily attainable goals for the present. Don’t try to take on too much at once.

Small goals are great because:

• They’re attainable. Huge, lofty goals are likely to only frustrate and discourage a small business.
• The attainment of each goal is a learning process. You can learn from your small successes and failures.
• Manageable goals that you can reach keep motivation and morale high.
• Tackling small goals builds momentum that you can then put to bigger and better things.

Small goals are great because they're attainable. Huge, lofty goals are likely to only frustrate and discourage a small business. Share on X Tackling small goals builds momentum that you can then put to bigger and better things. Share on X

 

A Different Approach

I love a book by James Clear, Atomic Habits, it is well worth reading and this link will take you to his website where you can download Chapter 1 for free. This is an extract from that chapter:

“If you want to predict where you’ll end up in life, all you have to do is follow the curve of tiny gains or tiny losses, and see how your daily choices will compound ten or twenty years down the line. Are you spending less than you earn each month? Are you making it into the gym each week? Are you reading books and learning something new each day? Tiny battles
like these are the ones that will define your future self.

Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.”

Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy. - James Clear, Atomic Habits Share on X

James Clear recommends that you focus on your overall system rather than goals. He defines goals as being about the results you want to achieve while systems are the processes that lead to those results. He recommends that you focus on the systems through good habits that are the compound interest of self-​improvement as getting 1% better every day counts for a lot in the long-​run.

 

Prioritise your Goals

If you adopt the right habits and systems your goals will become the direction that you want to go in. You probably have many goals, both short-term and long-term, but you need to focus on just one at a time. How do you do this? The best way is to assess the impact. Which of your goals will have the greatest impact on your business in the near future? This should be the one that you focus on first.

A few other things to consider are:

• You have one particular goal that logically comes ahead of other goals. For example, you need to build your email list before you start boosting sales through it.
• There are resources at your disposal now that make a specific goal viable; for example, a new software program for social media marketing may motivate you to work on your goal of boosting your social media presence.
• Lack of resources. Likewise, a lack of resources may make one particular goal ideal rather than another. You may need tech help for a particular goal but you don’t know anyone who can provide it. You can set this goal on the back burner for now while you work on other things.

You may have one particular goal that logically comes ahead of other goals. For example, build your email list before you start boosting sales through it. Share on X

Always prioritise goals and employ marketing strategies with your larger, long-term goals in mind. However, work on your systems as this keep your business on track as you tackle various projects.