Read the previous lesson 08 article here.
Goals. We all know what they are and how they work so I do not need to describe what they are and why we should do them. Let me ask you a question. How many of you reading this actually have goals—written goals that you have on a notepad, journal, composition book? We all make goals in our head, but why is it that few of us actually write them down? Is it because we are afraid of going back and reading them to only find out that we’ve come up short? Why do them in the first place? Well, that I will will tell you why.
Goals are great reminders of when we start to f*ck up. The great thing about goals is you have the power to keep them 100% confidential. I don’t recommend doing so, but that is your choice. I prefer to not only write down my goals, but to set a calendar reminder to look at them in the future to see if I’m on the right track. There’s nothing more rewarding than finding out that you are ahead of your projected goals. I go a step further and tell someone my goals so they push me or tell me that I’m slacking to get me motivated to keep going (also referred to as Accountability Partners).
When we look at setting our monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals for our white label online business of creating a mobile app development biz, we also must look at what our exit plan with all this is. Is it to build our business enough to quit our day job? Is it to build our business to profitability so we can have the free time to travel with our family? Whatever the exit plan, let’s make sure we have one written down.
There are many ways to start setting our goals. The way I’m about to explain is what I’ve found to be most beneficial after reading and listening to literally hundreds of books on business and personal development. By all means, this is not the only way to come up with your personal or business goals for this online business. To read more about some additional ways to find your business goals, The Ultimate Guide to Small Business Goal Setting article on thebalance.com has some great information by clicking here.
Yearly Goals
We start by listing our long-term goal first which is in this lesson is called our yearly goal. This will help us work our way backwards to a more easier-to-understand comprehension of our goal(s). Let’s begin by thinking of why we are starting an online business in the first place. I mean, there’s surely something on TV that we should be watching rather than spending our free time starting a business, right? Let’s use that reason as our primary fuel with why we are starting a biz.
According to an associate professor at Purdue University in Indiana, Maria Marshall suggests that there are four general areas that goals typically fall within: service, social, profit, or growth. These are explained below:
- Service – Goals related to improving customer service satisfaction or customer retention.
- Social – Goals that focus on giving back to the community, through philanthropy or volunteer organizations, for example.
- Profit – Goals set to increase profits by a certain percentage.
- Growth – Goals related to the expansion of the company, through new employees, for instance.
You can either pick one of these general areas or mix and match them to fulfill your particular needs. For our white label online business, there’s three that I immediately see what we can focus on. That would be growth—because we are a startup; profit—because we need to make money in order for this to make sense; and social—we can easily give back to the community through philanthropy (which I have already been thinking of with helping our Veterans start a business).
Quarterly & Monthly Goals
We now must work our way back to see how we can achieve the goals that we have written down. If we state that our yearly goal is to have $X amount of dollars, the easiest way is to divide that amount by 4 (to get the quarterly amount). So if we were to say that at the end of year one, we expect to make $30,000, quarterly the amount of our goal would need to be $7,500. This seems like it can be achieved. If we were to list our monthly price for our app development business at $49/month, then that means we need to at least obtain ~50 new clients each month.
We may not be able to get that amount in the first month, but we can easily use this as a goal. What if we only got half of our goal of 50 with just 25 clients? Okay, then that means that first month we only were able to make $1,225. Would that give you motivation to keep going? Obviously there’s fees and overhead that we need to consider, but those 25 clients will be compounded each month paying their monthly fee. So the next month we get another 25 new clients and now we’ve hit our goal!. Then the next month we do the same and now we’ve went over our goal!
Being realistic, the first month that we launch our online business, we may hear crickets while we find the secret sauce that is going to catapult us to the goals that we have set for ourselves. As we start to get more and more clients for our mobile app development biz, we can begin to work on our referral game. And who knows, there may be that hidden list of clients that no one has tapped yet that we can take the opportunity to help with our service.
Exit Plan
Before I started to get involved with entrepreneurship, I read a used book that I bought at Goodwill called Start It, Sell It & Make a Mint: 20 Wealth-Creating Secrets for Business Owners by Joe John Duran. The reason why I mention this book is because Duran has actually walked the walk when it comes to starting a business and selling one which happened to be his exit plan. In his book, Duran goes through what it takes to build a profitable business with his four stages of a business; infant, toddler, adolescent, and adult. This will give some insight with what actions we can take adapting it to our online business. I’ve found it used on Amazon for around $6 here or you may be able to rent it from your library for free.
The reason why I mentioned Duran’s book is because we must always be thinking about what we want to do with our business so we are not caught off guard when we get to the goal we originally wanted and have no idea with what to do. For our white label business of starting a mobile app development business, let’s create a goal of building it to a point where we are able to not only reward us for our hard work but give back to the U.S. Veteran community with helping them start a business of their very own. Then who knows, let’s sell the business and move onto other ideas!
The next post that you will see will be inside the Taking Action: The First Steps to Launching Your White Label Business—Chapter 4 Session: Research state & city licenses & permits needed for your white label business – Lesson 10.
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Till next time Biz Army…
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Expenses: This lesson did not have any expenses that were needed.
What’s In My MP3: Right now I’m skimming through past audio books for inspiration and ideas. Some of these books include Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Jen Sincero’s You are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, and Earl Nightingale’s The Essence of Success.
Click here to check out Audible by Amazon.