Small Business Daily Goals

Unless you’re a Jedi knight, you can’t hit what you can’t see. This is why it is absolutely necessary for the small business guerrilla to set a target, first and foremost.

Starting with your business income, you need to determine the minimum gross monthly sales you have to make just to stay afloat. This is your break-even point. Take into account all expense items such as rent, utilities, salaries, credit card bills, and other recurring monthly expenses. The reason you want to compute for the minimum amount is you want to keep your expectations low. Not pessimistic low, just realistic low. Some of you may argue: “Aim high and you will still hit something high.” And yes, I believe in that wisdom. But I also believe that nothing can be more frustrating than to shoot for something high and then never even come close to hitting it. At this critical time when small businesses are suffering from the burden of a global economic crisis, frustration and depression can weaken your resolve to survive. On the other hand, hitting your minimum goals every time makes you feel positively good and can motivate you to increase your goal every month. It’s just like a champion marathon runner who started off just trying out for 2K sprints and gradually ends up doing cross-country runs.

Besides, as a guerrilla entrepreneur, you are expected to be unconventional; to run against the flow. So if you raise some eyebrows following this tip, that’s expected. You’re a small business guerrilla!

It would be a good idea to input a modest profit of around 20 percent on top of your minimum gross monthly sale. Again, go low. The phrase “undersell, over deliver” keeps popping in my head as I was writing this article. Anyway, adding the minimum gross sale plus the 20 percent profit gives you your minimum MONTHLY GOAL. Dividing MONTHLY GOAL by the number of work days for that particular month (usually 20 to 24 days) gives you your minimum DAILY GOAL:

MONTHLY GOAL / No. of Days = DAILY GOAL

Listen up! DAILY GOALS ARE IMPORTANT! If there is just but one lesson you can take home from this article, it is this: DAILY GOALS ARE IMPORTANT. Daily goals enable you to see right away at the end of the day whether you are “on track” of your goal. Daily goals show you immediately if you are ahead or lagging behind. Daily goals enable you to react swiftly to compensate for today’s deficit instead of finding the deficit 30 days after.

Enough said for now. If you have read this up to this point, then perhaps it would be a good idea to go get pen and paper and do the math as explained here. Take ten minutes and compute for your DAILY GOAL. Don’t do it because I said so. Do it because you know this will help you a lot in your own personal goals.

Small business guerrillas grab every opportunity to accomplish their mission. And they make use of every available resource at their disposal. I hope you will find this article most useful.

Promoting Power