Embarking is critical, but you don’t want to embark without answering as many of the fundamental key questions as possible. In the diagram below, you will see the 8 key questions that you need to answer before embarking on your business journey.
- What is your objective?
- What do you want?
- What are your skills?
- Are you interested in franchising?
- When do you want to do it?
- Do you need funding?
- Who will you do it with?
- Why now?
These 8 questions will now become the basis of what you need to consider as you jump in and begin. As you work through each question you will start to establish the framework for your business. Just as a house is stronger with a good foundation, your business will be more successful with a strong framework.
By asking yourself the questions in this section and the upcoming chapters, you will define and understand the many aspects of your business that are so important to you. Knowing the answers to these questions are the foundation of building your business and will help you be successful for years to come.
What is your objective?
Why a person starts a business or continues in a business is based on their objective. It is completely normal for each of your objectives to be different from another person. Your objective will be yours and likely not like anyone else’s.
From my in-depth conversations with other entrepreneurs, I discovered a second major surprise; everyone’s business “objective” and path forward are very different.
Some of their objectives included:
- Preserving my father’s legacy.
- Rebuilding a family business from the 1930s,
- Ensuring my brother’s work is remembered.
- Not wanting to uproot my family and have to move.
- Building a business to sell and move on to another opportunity.
- Wanting to provide extra family income and have more flexibility.
- Building a business that will have a long-lasting impact after I am gone.
The conclusion I reached from these wide-ranging answers is that everyone’s path is unique. Each person has their own objective, and it is okay to chart your own course toward your dream. There is no “one path” or single objective in business. It’s perfectly fine for some business owners to operate in small streams while others want to sail great lakes or take a ship across the ocean.
Once I stepped out on my own (after a career of helping others in their businesses), I realized that I had the tools, abilities, and confidence to be successful on my own. My objective was to be less dependent on others and more dependent on myself for success. I had already helped grow other businesses and been responsible for everything from bringing in sales, to delivering projects, collecting the money due, and organizing new hires. Eventually, I wanted to have more control and reap the rewards of my work. I found that my experience had taught me the skills that allowed me to develop my objective – to build a business and be more dependent on myself for success.
Throughout history, we can see many examples of those who have entered business with different objectives. In other words, your objective doesn’t have to be to earn $1 million dollars a year. There are as many objectives as there are business owners.
Now let’s take the time to help you find yours. Use the section below to develop your clear objective. Are you looking for a small business, or is your dream to grow the business into a Fortune 500 company? Do you want to hand it over to a family member or use it to fund your retirement and close the doors? There is no correct answer, but it is essential to clarify what you want to do with your business before you begin. It will be extremely hard to reach your destination without defining it initially. Think of knowing your objective as charting your business course.
Every company owner should have a clear objective for their business. By taking the time to define yours, you give yourself the awareness of what you are working towards.