Daniel G. Taylor

Raising young men from adversity to prosperity through business

Phone: 0423 933 798

Home » leadership

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Setting Powerful Long-Term Goals for Your Company

by

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes


Today, we’re tackling a topic that can make or break your business: long-term goals. I’ve witnessed countless companies stumble because they lacked a clear vision for the future. But don’t worry! I’m here to walk you through the process of setting effective long-term goals that will guide your company towards success.

young male entrepreneur looks out the window thinking about the long term goals of his company

Table of contents

Key Takeaways

  • Long-term goals provide clarity, direction, and motivation for your business
  • Set goals in four key areas: product/service delivery, sales and marketing, financial, and community contribution
  • Make your goals specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART)
  • Break long-term goals into smaller, short-term goals
  • Regularly review and adjust your goals as your business evolves

Why Long-Term Goals Matter


Running a business can be overwhelming, and it’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind and lose sight of the bigger picture. That’s where long-term goals come in. They give your work purpose, help you make informed decisions, and provide daily motivation. Long-term goals also help you spot meaningful trends and shift your business from reactive to proactive mode.

Setting Goals in Four Key Areas

To set your company up for long-term success, you need to focus on four crucial areas:

#1) Product or Service Delivery

Your product or service is the heart of your business. Set goals that focus on improving quality, expanding your offerings, and staying ahead of the competition. For example, aim to launch a new product or service that fills a gap in the market and solves a problem for your target audience.

When I had a private consultation with my mentor, Dr John Demartini, he advised releasing a new product or service every 90 days.

#2) Sales and Marketing

Without effective sales and marketing strategies, even the best products and services will go unnoticed. Set goals that focus on increasing revenue, building brand recognition, and growing your customer base. For example, aim to increase sales by a specific percentage over the next few years or become the go-to brand in your niche.

#3) Financial

Money keeps the business world turning. Set financial goals that focus on increasing profit margins, reducing expenses, and improving cash flow. For example, aim to become the leader in your specific market niche or expand your company by opening more locations.

#4) Community Contribution


Giving back to the community not only makes the world a better place but also builds goodwill for your brand. Set goals that focus on making a positive impact in your local or global community. For example, aim to create a successful non-profit organization that aligns with your company’s values or partner with local charities to make a difference.

Making Your Goals SMART


When setting your long-term goals, ensure they are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This means avoiding generic goals and being specific about your target audience and niche. Use simple language, and make sure your goals are memorable and easy to understand.

For example, instead of setting a vague goal like “increase sales,” set a SMART goal like “increase sales by 25% over the next 3 years by expanding into new markets and launching a targeted marketing campaign.”

Breaking Down Long-Term Goals

Long-term goals can seem daunting, but breaking them down into smaller, short-term goals makes them more manageable. These short-term goals act as stepping stones towards your larger objectives.

For example, if your long-term goal is to open a new location, your short-term goals might include:

By focusing on these smaller goals, you’ll make steady progress towards your long-term objectives.

Achieving Your Goals

Now that you’ve set your long-term goals and broken them down into manageable steps, it’s time to make them a reality. Use a strategic plan as a roadmap, with your vision as the destination, long-term goals as milestones, and short-term goals as the odometer. Track your progress regularly and make adjustments as needed to stay on course.

Remember, achieving long-term goals requires persistence, flexibility, and a willingness to learn from setbacks. Celebrate your wins along the way and use them as motivation to keep pushing forward.

Conclusion

Setting powerful long-term goals is essential for any business owner who wants to achieve lasting success. By focusing on product/service delivery, sales and marketing, financial, and community contribution, you can create a roadmap for growth and impact. Remember to make your goals SMART, break them down into manageable steps, and regularly review and adjust them as your business evolves. With clear long-term goals in place and a commitment to achieving them, you’ll be well on your way to building the business of your dreams.

Action Steps

  1. Set aside dedicated time to brainstorm and write your long-term goals for each key area: product/service delivery, sales and marketing, financial, and community contribution.
  2. Ensure your goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
  3. Break your long-term goals down into smaller, short-term goals you can work on over the next few months or years.
  4. Create a strategic plan that outlines how you will achieve your goals and track your progress regularly.
  5. Review and adjust your goals as needed to ensure they remain relevant and achievable as your business grows and changes.
  6. Celebrate your milestones and use them as motivation to keep working towards your long-term objectives.
  7. Surround yourself with a supportive network of mentors, peers, and experts who can offer guidance and accountability as you work towards your goals.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the long-term goal of a company?

The long-term goal of a company is to achieve sustained success and growth over an extended period, typically 3-5 years or more. This could mean dominating your market category, building a strong brand reputation, creating a positive company culture, or making a significant impact in your community. The specific long-term goals will vary depending on the company’s vision, values, and industry, but they should all work together to guide the business towards a thriving future. Effective long-term goals provide clarity, direction, and purpose for every member of the organization, from entry-level employees to top executives. By setting and working towards these goals, companies can make strategic decisions, allocate resources effectively, and adapt to changing market conditions while staying true to their core mission. Ultimately, the long-term goal of any company should be to create value for its stakeholders – customers, employees, shareholders, and the wider community – in a sustainable and meaningful way.

The Ultimate Leadership Style

by

a compass guides you to your ultimate leadership style
Photo by Bakr Magrabi from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/compass-on-hand-3203659/

I love leadership. But when I began, I didn’t even know what a leadership style was.

Way back when I was 15, a friend from church loaned me a book, Hand Me Another Brick: How Effective Leaders Motivate Themselves and Others, by the Christian author, Charles R. Swindoll. That book is a practical guide to leadership based on one book in the Bible.

From the moment I started reading it, I was hooked on leadership.

In the time since—a short 37 years—I’ve read a lot more about leadership and I’ve applied what I’ve learned to different leadership opportunities. Tonight, I’m going to share with you three lessons I’ve learned about leadership that will help you develop the ultimate leadership style.

Leaders Learn How to Be Leaders

Before we get into that, here’s a new definition of leadership for 2022 I came up with earlier this year for a LinkedIn post:

Leadership is getting a result while ensuring everyone has a great time along the way.

Daniel G. Taylor

Perhaps the earliest thing I learned about leadership is this: leaders learn how to be leaders. No one is born a leader.

Sure, some people are naturally charismatic, a style that gets equated with leadership because people are naturally attracted and drawn to such people. But you don’t need to be charismatic to be a leader.

What does it take to be a leader? All it takes is to develop a single leadership style.

Daniel G. Taylor

The first leadership role I had was as a teen leader in my church’s youth ministry. The first leadership style I developed was an altruistic one, based on moral strength and listening skills. I was expected to model behaviour that the people I was leading would aspire to follow.

Think about it like this. You’ve already developed a way to influence someone or a group of people to get a desired result. And you went about doing that the same way you did everything else you’ve mastered: you learned something.

What I’m going to urge you to do in this article is to develop several dominant leadership styles. That’s your takeaway.

When I did the Toastmasters “Discover Your Leadership Style” assessment for a talk on this topic, I found that while I have one style that has a score of 24, I also have two styles with a score of 23, and two more styles with a score of 22. The difference between those scores is so minor as to be irrelevant. I don’t have one dominant leadership style, I have five dominant leadership styles—and developing that many styles has been a deliberate strategy on my part.

You can watch my talk, “The Ultimate Leadership Style” here:

And all of the above leads to my second point.

Leaders Learn New Leadership Styles to Meet the Needs of Their Team

Every leadership style has a time when it’s not the most effective style to use. You can find your leadership style by taking this free assessment from the University of Southern California.

Sometimes, the best approach is to get buy-in from everyone on your team. At other times, time doesn’t permit that style and you need to take use the authoritative style and dictate what needs to be done.

For example, let me tell you a story from my time as President of City Centre Toastmasters. That club has always been a multicultural club. Different cultures have different ways of approaching leadership. I found that in our club leadership meetings, our Chinese members weren’t speaking up.

They came from a culture where you withheld your own opinion so you didn’t make leaders look bad in public. The concept is called “saving face.”

So what I did was arrange one-on-one catch-ups, and I found that when I used a coaching style, those same Chinese members shared ideas—and brilliant ones.

You have two approaches for developing new leadership styles. The first is to develop a new style as the need arises. The second is to always learn new styles, so you have a toolkit ready to meet any need.

Leaders are Readers

And how do you constantly learn new styles? It comes down to something you’ve probably heard before and my third and final point: Leaders are readers.

Leaders know the value of ongoing learning, whether that’s practical leadership skills from how-to books or biographies of the greatest leaders from throughout history.

Let me tell you the story of just one of the prominent leaders from history known as a reader: Napoleon. Napoleon had a personal librarian. Every time he went out to a battle, Napoleon took a portable library with him. But even when he was starting out, because of the extent of his knowledge gained from reading, his superiors entrusted Napoleon with an unusual amount of responsibility for one so young.

This begs the question: Are you a reader? And by being a reader, I don’t mean audiobooks. That’s not reading, that’s listening. Completely different thing; a completely different mental skill set. What I mean when I say are you a reader is, do you make time to sit down and read a book each day?

If you’re looking for book recommendations, each month I publish an email newsletter, The Leader’s Bookshelf, with my reviews of what I’ve read in the previous month. To get this newsletter—and my weekly email newsletter—please fill out the form below.

So let’s come back to this idea of the ultimate leadership style.

Conclusion: Learn New Leadership Styles to Become an Outstanding Leader

What is the ultimate leadership style? The ultimate leadership style is one where you have a repertoire of different styles you can call on to meet the needs of your team at the moment.

In conclusion, leaders learn how to be leaders. No one is born a leader. A good leader develops one leadership style. But one style gives you all the upsides and counters none of the downsides of that particular style. An outstanding leader, therefore, constantly seeks to develop new leadership styles so they become strong in the weaknesses of their dominant style.

So let me ask you: Do you want to be a good leader or an outstanding one?