Today on Rizen Academy we’re going to look at the guidelines you should keep in mind when developing an inbound-focused set of goals for your business.

Jeff Lambert:                00:01                Today on Rizen Academy, we're going to look at the guidelines that you should keep in mind when developing an inbound focused set of goals for your business. Stay tuned for more information.

Jeff Lambert:                00:20                Hello everybody and welcome to Inbound Academy brought to you by Rizen. My name is Jeff Lambert. So today we're going to talk about business goals, why you should have them and why they should reflect your company purpose. And we're also going to talk about how you can effectively set up short and long-term goals to talk about that. I've invited Nicole Mena from Rizen back into the studio today. She is the creative director and expert of all things business goals. Thanks for joining us again, Nicole.

Nichole Mena:              00:49                Thanks for having me again, Jeff.

Jeff Lambert:                00:49                Absolutely. So why should I as a business owner take time to even develop a business plan?

Nichole Mena:              00:56                So every business is going to face its own unique set of challenges, whether you're starting up or scaling up. Growth really takes time and it takes effort, but nobody launched a rocket ship without a plan, right? So that's where your business goals come in. Think about your business. This could mean a team of one or it can mean a team of a hundred. No matter the number, you really have the opportunity to align everyone behind a set of shared goals - a shared vision that everyone can work towards.

Jeff Lambert:                01:32                So we have that our business goal should be shared throughout the organization. And I took time, and I'm sure hopefully our listeners took time to listen to episode eight. And that talks about developing a company purpose. Kind of like this overarching idea of standing for something that's important. So how should my business goals, or why should my business goals line up with that company purpose?

Nichole Mena:              01:56                So when you set those goals correctly, they can align everyone in your organization from C suite to the individual contributor, right? And if you don't answer the "why" and it's not for a lofty purpose, then motivation can be really hard to come by.

Jeff Lambert:                02:12                And we talked about this in previous episodes. Customers, they want to know that the company that they're buying from not only cares about them, but cares about things that we all should care about.

Nichole Mena:              02:20                Yes, absolutely.

Jeff Lambert:                02:22                You know, I think about when it comes to mind for me, LL Bean or Patagonia, they're very focused on making sure that their products are good for the environment. And you know, there's so many countless examples of businesses that also have developed a company purpose that resonates with people.

Nichole Mena:              02:37                Yes, that's correct.

Jeff Lambert:                02:38                So if the purpose is set and I want to start making a business plan, what steps should I take? Where should I start?

Nichole Mena:              02:46                All right, so objectives and key results need to be laid out. We also call this these "OKRs." If you start with your object objectives, there are statements that define qualitative outcomes of your goal. So they really asked the question, "where do you want to go?" "What are you trying to achieve?" And they convey your endpoint and they're meant to be broader. For an example, an objective can be improving customer satisfaction. Now that you've laid out your key results, they need to be very specific. So how do you reach that objective? Key results are measurable and you can verify whether or not those results are achieved.

Jeff Lambert:                03:32                So they really work together?

Nichole Mena:              03:33                Yes, the objective is a little bit more broad and then you'd have the key result which says specifically metrics-wise this is what I'm supposed to hit.

Jeff Lambert:                03:40                Yes. Okay. Very good. And businesses, do you think that, is it important to develop an objective and a key result just in the short term? "So within the next 60 days, this is what I'm going to do?"

Nichole Mena:              03:53                That is preferable. So you want to do short-term goals. Of course you can set long-term goals but you want to really focus on those short-term goals and then change. They can change as, as you know, as soon as those three months have passed.

Jeff Lambert:                04:06                Sure. Okay. So try and really focus those, those key metrics more on the short-term goals and then long-term goals should be more objective-based.

Nichole Mena:              04:13                There you go.

Jeff Lambert:                04:13                Okay. What would you recommend for businesses as they start out in terms of the length of short-term and long-term? How far out should they be planning do you think?

Nichole Mena:              04:22                Um, I would say plan for the quarter. That's really where we live. We live in the 90 days. Of course you can set your yearly goals, even five-year, 10-year goals, but I'm really focused on those 90 days and how that's going to impact the rest of your year.

Jeff Lambert:                04:39                Okay. Well I think that gives our listeners a starting point as they want to develop a business plan. And remember, if you want more information about developing a company purpose, you can go back to episode eight and we talk about that in-depth as well. Nicole, thanks again for joining me today.

Nichole Mena:              04:52                Thanks for having me get Jeff.

Jeff Lambert:                04:53                Absolutely. To our listeners, thank you so much for joining us. Remember, we release new episodes every week day and they're always never longer than 10 minutes, so they fit into your schedule and they're always focused on trying to help you improve your business. If you're looking for a little marketing help and you want a company that's results driven and they want to develop a relationship with you, I would recommend that you check out Rizen. They're available at gorizen.com and they offer a full suite of marketing services. You can also interact with them on social media. They're available at Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at the username RizenInbound. That's one word, RizenInbound. Thanks again for tuning in to today's episode. We'll see you on the next one.