A Guide to Setting Effective Entrepreneur Goals

Embarking on an entrepreneurial journey is like setting sail in the vast ocean. The winds of the market can be unpredictable, but having a compass—your goals—makes navigating easier. As an entrepreneur, setting specific goals is vital for personal and professional growth. Achieving those goals will be predicated on your ability to guide your hard work through a clear unifying vision of your future.

A Guide to Setting Effective Entrepreneur Goals

Having a clear vision of your ideal future  is the first step toward achieving seemingly impossible goals.

What is the End Goal of an Entrepreneur?

At its heart, entrepreneurship is a deeply personal journey with the end goals varying depending on the individual in question.

One possible aim among entrepreneurs is to establish a successful business and also achieve a healthy balance between their personal and professional lives. This involves creating a business venture that fulfills market needs and secures financial stability while allowing for personal growth and life satisfaction.

A study of 527 firms supports this approach by showing that firms that supported work-life balance experienced more profitability and improved organizational performance.

Another possible direction for an entrepreneur that can be highly lucrative is to efficiently implement a marketing strategy and build a good social presence. An entrepreneur should be aware of the power of the internet, particularly social media, in today's digitally-driven age.

A well-crafted marketing campaign, directed towards the right target audiences on social media platforms, can significantly contribute to business growth. According to the results of a survey published in Buffer’s annual report of 1800 marketers across all industries, 73% of the participants believe that their efforts have been “somewhat effective” or even “very effective” for their business.

What are the 3 Main Goals of a Business?

While each business may have specific goals unique to its operations, three universal goals are paramount for every entrepreneur.

1. Financial Stability: To achieve financial stability is at the core of every business plan. Entrepreneurs can often begin by applying for a business loan to get their company off the ground. The end goal, however, is to have a business that thrives and can support itself in the long term.
2. Customer Satisfaction: Central to the success of a business is the goal of fostering customer satisfaction. The digital bank Monzo provides an excellent example of this in practice. Renowned for their customer-centric approach, they emphasize creating services that meet and anticipate customer needs. They have achieved this through continual customer engagement, feedback to refine their services, and technology to provide seamless user experiences. Monzo has successfully built a loyal customer base by prioritizing their customers' needs and satisfaction, contributing to increased sales, and helping their business grow.
3. Growth and Expansion: Sustained growth and strategic expansion form fundamental goals for businesses. LEGO, a global toy manufacturing giant, serves as a prime example of resilience and strategic adaptation. Amid near bankruptcy in the early 2000s, LEGO undertook a significant shift. The company refocused on its iconic LEGO bricks core while pushing boundaries through strategic innovations such as themed sets. Simultaneously, LEGO ventured into new digital arenas, launching video games and producing award-winning movies. Their strategic pivot underpins the importance of adaptability and resilience in achieving business growth and maintaining the long-term vision.

What is an example of goal setting in entrepreneurship?

SMART goal-setting model

The entrepreneur goals setting is not merely about broad objectives like 'growth' or 'success.' It involves creating specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals.

For instance, instead of aiming to 'increase sales,' a SMART goal would be 'to increase sales by 20% over the next quarter through a targeted social media marketing campaign aimed at our target audiences.' Here, the goal is specific (increase sales by 20%), measurable (sales can be tracked), attainable (with a focused marketing campaign), relevant (sales growth is crucial for any business), and time-bound (to be achieved over the next quarter).

Facebook's expansion into the mobile arena is an example of SMART goal-setting in entrepreneurship. In the early 2010s, they set a specific goal to shift from being a primarily desktop-based platform to a mobile-first company.

In 2013, Facebook’s mobile advertising revenue accounted for a staggering 53% of its total ad revenue, marking a significant upturn from 2012, when mobile advertising represented a mere 23% of the total ad revenue.

By setting and diligently following this clear, specific goal, Facebook has become an integral part of mobile users' lives today.

The CLEAR Goal-Setting Model

Another model for the setting of entrepreneur goals is the CLEAR model. This goal-setting model emphasizes collaboration, limited scope, emotional connection, appreciable milestones, and refinement. By translating broad objectives into specific, emotionally engaging, and flexible targets, this model fosters a sense of shared responsibility and adaptability, enhancing both individual and team performance.

Consider a generic goal such as 'improving team productivity.' Converted into a CLEAR goal, it might appear as 'increase team productivity by 15% in the next six months by fostering a collaborative environment, leveraging emotional drivers such as job satisfaction and personal growth, dividing the task into manageable portions, and continually refining our approach based on feedback and results.' This goal is collaborative (involves the whole team), limited (specific focus on productivity), emotional (taps into the team's motivations), appreciable (can be broken down into smaller tasks), and refinable (allows for adjustments).

Spotify's transition to a 'squad' structure in the mid-2010s illustrates the CLEAR goal-setting method in action. Their central goal was to foster innovation and quicken the pace of development by organizing their teams into small, autonomous 'squads' with the power to make their own decisions.

In a matter of a few years, Spotify's active user base catapulted from 75 million in 2015 to 489 million in 2022. The squad model promoted collaboration, broke down tasks into manageable sizes, triggered emotional investment, and allowed for constant refinement of their processes. This led to Spotify achieving its primary goal and experiencing considerable growth and transformation.

The takeaway

Clear and precise goals are the foundation for successful business ventures

In conclusion, setting the right goals in an entrepreneurial journey is one of the most important aspects of business success. Entrepreneurship is a deeply unique journey in which one’s values, personal goals, and aspirations determine the destination.

However, amidst the endless vista of possibilities of entrepreneur goals, achieving a healthy work-life balance and creating an online presence might stand out as shared interests among entrepreneurs.

Achieving a work-life balance gives you the possibility to savor the other fruits life has to bear besides the long hours of work, and it also boosts your efforts, propelling you to newer heights.

Leveraging the power of an online presence can vastly shorten the time or effort involved in reaching these heights. The internet offers you an almost limitless reach toward new people, clients, and business opportunities.

Getting to these heights is not a miracle work but the culmination of hard work guided by a clear vision.

You can use established goal-setting models like Smart or CLEAR to achieve this clarity of vision, but at its core, it simply comes as a consequence of articulating your vision in easy-to-follow and measurable steps.

Having clear business goals is just the tip of the iceberg in your entrepreneurial journey.

In order to thrive in today's business landscape demands more than just effective goal-setting. Aspiring business professionals and entrepreneurs need a robust educational background that develops crucial skills and integrates knowledge across various dimensions.

Here at Meridian University, we aim to empower our students through our Creative Enterprise MBA to excel in traditional business roles as well as become successful entrepreneurs.

Our MBA is designed to equip you with core business skills such as finance, marketing, and operations, but it goes beyond that. It encourages creativity, innovation, and purpose-driven leadership.

The curriculum addresses the complexities inherent in both enhancing business performance and launching a new enterprise by focusing on five key dimensions:

• Transforming business innovation
• Building purpose-driven organizations
• Regenerating the commons
• Empowering companies and non-profits through living systems
• Actualizing generative entrepreneurship

So, if you are ready to set sail on the vast ocean of entrepreneurship, speak with an Admission Advisor today to chart a course toward your ideal future.