It is important as a small business owner, entrepreneur, or leader in your community to always think long term.

Many entrepreneurs and leaders are distracted by whatever is happening at the moment, or unexpected interruptions.

Setting long-term goals and keeping your eye on the results becomes key, especially given how time files, and when it is easy to be distracted on a daily basis.

You need to make sure you have funds for payroll and rent, advertising fees, and so much more. It’s important to remember, as you do your daily hustle, to keep your eye on what I call the long(term)gevity of your organization.

You do that by creating simple long-term goals.

You could call them SMART goals: Simple, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. No matter what you call them, the key is to be clear about what the goals entail.

Say you want to open a second location. That’s a big goal, and it won’t happen overnight. You need to think about what you can do on a daily or weekly basis, to inch toward that goal and the date you set for it. Set you final date and backtrack step-by-step.

With Long Term goals you don’t have to be actively working on all of it every single day. You might decide to put in one hour a day or week or month, gradually building on each step forward.

I schedule time every final Saturday of the month to work on writing my blogs. Sticking with it allows me to have blogs or articles or ideas for the entire year. The same is true with redesigning some of our workshops. Once a quarter, I schedule time to do that.

These ideas or concepts can be hard to do — and I admit that I might have missed one or two myself — but as long as you come up with the goal and put the dates in your calendar, with time it becomes habitual, and you make sure you are moving forward toward your goals.

BEFORE YOU GO

We see our blogs as opportunities for dialogue. Please share your thoughts as comments.

What long-term goals do you have today?

What does long-term mean to you? One year, five years, ten years?

What other ways or tools have you used to keep your eye on the long(term)gevity of your business?

_____