Start with the End Goal in Mind

While I don’t look for blog titles while at church, this past Sun­day was dif­fer­ent. My pas­tor’s first point in his ser­mon on 1 Peter 4:7 – 11 said Chris­tians should always have the end goal in mind. In short, he or she should live every­day in light of Christ’s return. That does­n’t mean to sit around twid­dling one’s thumbs. It means to be active and prac­tice Chris­t­ian char­i­ty and ser­vice to oth­ers, for this brings glo­ry to God (vs. 8 – 11). Although the 1 Peter pas­sage isn’t talk­ing about run­ning a busi­ness, this thought came to me: a busi­ness own­er should run his (or her) busi­ness start­ing with the end in mind too. I’ve met many busi­ness own­ers who don’t know where they are head­ed with their com­pa­ny. They don’t have any short or long term goals estab­lished. If asked what they hope to do in rev­enue this year, or even 3 – 5 years, most don’t know how to answer or tell a lit­tle lie to make it sound like they do. Only a small per­cent­age of small busi­ness own­ers know where they are head­ed. Only a few focus on the end goal. It might look some­thing like this, ​“In 5 years I hope to be mak­ing a $250,000 salary, work­ing 10 months out of the year, have 15+ employ­ees, with 80% of my busi­ness com­ing from repeat and refer­rals. I will have a full-time busi­ness man­ag­er, pro­duc­tion man­ag­er and office admin­is­tra­tor while I focus on ________. I’ll be known in my town as the #1 _________ pro­vid­ing excep­tion­al _________.” The end in goal is not always the end when you sell or retire, although that is a goal. The end might be a mar­ket­ing cam­paign, hir­ing employ­ees, a char­i­ty event, your salary, and so on. Anoth­er exam­ple, Instead of say­ing, ​“We need to hire some­one.” You’d say, ​“We need to hire a per­son who can sell $1,500,000 with lit­tle or no over­site from me!” Then you begin work­ing back­wards and break­ing down all the steps it will take to look for a clos­er of that cal­iber. What­ev­er you want to accom­plish, you have to start at the end and work back­wards. You as the busi­ness own­er has to know where you are head­ed so you can lead your team for­ward with con­fi­dence. When the own­er is focused on the end, he (she) will begin to see his employ­ees catch the vision. How will move your busi­ness for­ward this year? 3 Years? What will it look like in 10 years? Let me know in the com­ments below or by email­ing me, as some of you still do.