The SMART way to set a goal that grows your business
The goal that feels great but never reaches “do”
Most owners we work with have a version of the same big goal, a number set years down the road:
“I want to hit $5M in five years.”
There’s nothing wrong with having a vision like that. It points you in a direction. But on its own, it won’t tell you what to do this week. The goals that grow a business are smaller, closer and built to be acted on. The cleanest way to set one is to make it SMART.
What makes a goal SMART
SMART is a simple checklist for a goal you can use:
- Specific. You know exactly what you’re aiming at. Not “grow the business,” but “add $40K of monthly revenue from recurring service work.”
- Measurable. You can put a number on it and check your progress this week, not just at year-end.
- Achievable. It’s a real stretch, grounded in your actual capacity, pricing and pipeline, rather than a number you picked because it sounded good.
- Relevant. It moves the business in the direction you genuinely want to go and it connects to your bigger vision.
- Time-bound. It has a deadline close enough that this week’s actions matter.
A goal that checks all five boxes does something a five-year number can’t: it shapes what you do on Monday.
Where the big goal falls short
Run “$5M in five years” through the checklist and the gap shows up fast:
- It isn’t specific enough to act on. More jobs? Higher prices? A new location? It doesn’t say.
- It isn’t measurable week to week. If you’re at $1.8M today, no number tells you whether last week moved you closer.
- The timeframe is so far out that nothing you do this month feels connected to it.
It’s a fine vision. It’s just not a goal you can work with yet. To get there, you break it down.
The SMART version, broken down
Goals get usable when they’re close enough that this week’s actions visibly move the needle. For most operating businesses, that means setting the same goal at four levels:
- Annual: a clear revenue and profit target for the year, with explicit assumptions (number of jobs, average ticket, close rate, margin).
- Quarterly: a target for the next 90 days that lays out what each month needs to look like.
- Monthly: a number for the month, broken into weekly checkpoints.
- Weekly: specific actions that ladder up to the monthly number.
Each level is specific, measurable and time-bound. The big number stops being a story and becomes a math problem you solve piece by piece.
A specific example
Take an owner with an annual goal of $2.4M. With seasonality, that lands in twelve monthly chunks of varying size, say January at $150K, May at $220K, July at $250K, December at $180K.
Today is Monday of the third week of May. The owner can ask:
- What was last week’s revenue? ($48K)
- Where do I need to be by month-end to hit May’s $220K? ($72K more in the next two weeks)
- What does that require? (24 jobs, about 12 per week, at an average ticket of $3K with current close rate)
- What does the leading indicator look like? (estimates out: 30 last week, so 24 closed is plausible)
Now the goal is operational. Every Monday for the next two weeks, the owner knows exactly what they’re trying to do. The decisions are obvious.
Want help turning your year into SMART goals that drive behavior? That’s part of what the twice-a-month sessions are for and your dashboard keeps each goal in view so you always know whether you’re on pace.