I have an Idea for a Business! Now what? Part 1. Goals

This is part one in a series of articles for starting a business in the 2010's and beyond.

There is a multitude of information out there about starting a business , but at the pace the world is moving much of this information is outdated. There are basics that haven't changed, but with new regulations, Terrorist Financing and Money Laundering issues. starting and operating a business properly is not as easy as just putting a stand on your front lawn and selling crafts and/or veggies.
There are also ulterior motives to much of the advice on starting a business and those motives get passed on as good advice.  A perfect example is the idea of a Small Business Loans. Bluntly they aren't good, shouldn't exist and simply the worst thing to ever get for a startup business.

So you have an idea for a business?!  Great!
Now that you have an idea it's time to start that business right?  WRONG!
Many people who have a business idea think that once they have the idea they need to act fast and start doing business before someone else beats them to it.

This may be the case in some situations, but either the other person is leagues ahead of you, or they jumped right into it and will most likely fail do to lack of planning.  Neither of these guarantee success, but a properly planned business not only positions you for success when the time is right, it may also prevent you from getting in over your head or making a rash decision that ends in disappointment and failure, even possible legal and financial problems.

There is a lot of advice on business planning, being an entrepreneur, and so on.  Some of this advice consists of starting with a business plan, others suggest the "entrepreneur assessment" to see if your ready, there are programs that are setup to discourage you in order to test your seriousness and gauge ambition and motivation.

These are definitely all helpful tools and methodologies, but if you are truly motivated, not intimidated, and ready to move forward with your business then there is something you need to do first.

GOAL(S)!
Ready to set your business goal?
Probably not!
Running a business is like running your life, and the same principals apply.
Most advice directs you to write a mission statement and then your business plan. How can you write a business plan if you don't know how? One good way is Business Plans for Dummies.  It's a great book and guide to writing a business plan.  I am going to assume that you will combine multiple sources of information and guides, as you should.  The same thing doesn't work for everyone, or for every business.  This guide will provide you with new basics, and terms and regulations that apply to everyone.
How can you write a business plan if you don't write the mission statement first?
Simple!
You can't
The mission statement is your guide to focus on in order to complete the plan.
How can you write a mission statement if you haven't set your goal?
Once again, you can't.
The mission statement outlines your process to achieve the goals in a broad but informative way.

Ok, and your goal is?...........

If you're like most people you either just got silent and your little grey cells just stopped processing, or you spit out what you think is what you your goal is. If you actually know what your focused goal is then congratulations, your done, go start your business!
I wouldn't really suggest you do that, but if you do know, then you are leaps and bounds ahead of most people.

Now for the majority the answers to this, other than silence, are typically answers like "I want to be rich.""I want to make a million dollars." "I want it to be successful." "I want it to be the next Walmart or Microsoft". While these are ambitious, and great outcomes, they are not goals they are the results of achieving goals.

As I have stated numerous times before if you want to be rich, rob a bank.  I use this to demonstrate that if the result you desire is becoming rich then robbing a bank is a way of achieving that result.  The goal is to get away with robbing the bank. Therefore you goal isn't to get rich it is to be successful in achieving your specific and focused goal and as a result be financially stable, wealthy, powerful etc. This means you need to know and understand what you want to do.
A goal needs to be focused.

Assuming that as the title states, you have an Idea, then you at least have a direction to start in.  A focused and specific goal of your new business would be something to the effect of "To make a $50,000.00 profit by the end of year one."

The goal sets a time and a success point.  A specific goal essentially is an SLA. If your not familiar with it SLA stands for Service Level Agreement.  These are metric performance levels that are set as standards for task completion.
You are giving yourself a task, a sales goal, a metric in which you deem an exceptable rate of success in a certain time period:

Task/Goal

Time:  from business opening to end of first fiscal year
Goal: $50,000.00 profit

With these goal parameters being set you can now schedule periodic assessments, you have a specific focus deadline and monetary amount. You can properly budget around that amount and even set charts with milestones to the goal.

The example above is a short term goal, it is what is considered a mini goal or sub goal. These are goals that need to be achieved to reach the overall goal.  There is no right order to develop these goals, you may have an overall goal first or think you have one and realize they are actually sub goals. and vice versa. This concept works like a funnel all of your sub goals go into the funnel and come out as an overall goal. When speaking in business terms it is a projection or SLA flowchart. this will be needed in the business plan.


Going back a few paragraphs to the misconceived goals, I will use the goal "I want to be the next Walmart."  Even though vague and what would be considered an outcome of a goal it is not far off.  If you break down what Walmart is, it's history and ownership structure, then those specifics can be used as goals. to state it specifically the goal above would be:

Goal:
To maintain private ownership, have 3000 locations worldwide, an annual revenue of 500BN,  50,000 employees and an personal annual salary of 10BN by year 20.

That specific goal gives a deadline, 2 monetary achievements and employee amount. It allows you to focus on the specifics, not just be Walmart.  You cant strive to be something if you don't know how its structured or how it functions.

Once you have your focused and specific goal, the question is, "how do I achieve this goal?"  At this point now that you understand what focused goals are you should be able to start listing all of the mini or sub goals you will need to achieve in order to get to the main goal.


But don't start yet............

Part 2: Viability and due diligence.