Roadmaps offer intentionality and accountability. As you look to grow your business or personal goals, a roadmap guides us to success, with check-points and deadlines along the way. And more importantly, creating a roadmap is FUN because who doesn’t love dreaming big?!

We’re sharing why a roadmap gave us the lifestyle of our dreams, plus how to create one for you and your business!

Roadmap to Live & Work more Intentionally

From personal experience, co-founders Brent and Maggie created a personal roadmap in 2016 that led them to create intentional living, save money financially, buy a house, and start their own business.

Our first step? Decide what kind of life we wanted to build together (we literally vision-boarded this part). Then we set out to create a roadmap and action plan that would get us there as quickly as possible!

What is a Roadmap?

A roadmap is:

flexible planning technique to support strategic and long-range planning, by matching short-term and long-term goals with specific actions.

What did our personal roadmap look like?

Our goal? A life centered around financial freedom, family and friends and a healthy, active lifestyle.

We sat down, discussed our big dreams, and then created Excel sheets with annual financial and personal goals. In 2016. we set out to have X amount in savings, buy a home, and start a business.

We’re in 2021 and we’ve met or surpassed all of our goals! How?

By reviewing that roadmap! Once a quarter, we sit down to review our progress for each goal. At each “check-in” we discuss our progress and determine if we want to edit or tweak things along the way. As expected, the roadmap provides a framework, but life has speed bumps and plans can change quickly.

For example, our initial life plan was to start our own business by 2025, but Covid provided an opportunity for us to accelerate those plans. Because we project our financial situation & big goals 10 years in the future, we are able to move targets around easier, ensuring that the long-term success still works when short-term goals are or aren’t met.

So where are we going by 2030? Our loftiest goal within the next 10 years is to create a life where we can spend 3 months a year in Spain.

Six Steps to Creating a Roadmap to Hit your Goals

*We love this saying because so many of us have goals but never realize them! By all means, do it!*

While the example is a personal roadmap, having a business roadmap is just as critical. Our businesses have big dreams, too!

All too often, we see business owners with loose goals and no timelines to implement their strategies. While there might be big-lofty goals, the day-to-day grind often causes business owners to lose sight of their goal progression and what’s still needed to implement & meet their initial targets.

Here’s how to get started!

Step One: Identify Measurable Goals

List out of all of the goals for your personal life or business you want to achieve that are measurable. Make the goals lofty enough that you need to stretch, but achievable enough so you don’t fail immediately and become dejected. Goals can be revenue, sales, clients, products sold, costs, etc. Think short-term (1-3 years) and long-term (10 years).

Step Two: Add Timeframes (w/checkpoints) to Goals

Separate the goals in terms of timeframe you want to achieve, both short-term and long-term. Make annual goals (and possibly quarterly or monthly).

One of the biggest areas Local Union can help is assisting businesses with seeing their holistic and long-term opportunities. If you need help seeing beyond today (or tomorrow), shoot us a note!

Step Three: Add 2-3 Accomplishable Milestones to Short-Term Goals

Focus on the short-term goals first and come up with 2-3 milestones that need to happen to reach each goal. Breaking down the goal to this level allows you to set building blocks towards your goal and provides a path from where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow.

Step Four: Develop Qualitative Metrics to Measure for Each Goal

Put a measurable numerical result associated with each building block (if you can) to ensure you’re getting closer to the desired results. Having generic goals is great but putting financial or metrics behind a goal help us visualize exactly what is needed.

Step Five: Review your Progress!

Review your progress against your roadmap on a regimented basis either monthly or quarterly. The roadmap is a tool to build accountability and keep you focused. Don’t be hard on yourself if you haven’t met your goal just yet - the point is to create a routine where you’re checking in with yourself, your family, and your business!

If you’re spending all of your time on items that are not helping you reach your goals, then you need to re-evaluate your plans back at square one. A roadmap with check-ins will provide visibility to this.

Step Six: Consider Creating Two Roadmaps - One Short-term & One Long-term.

Once you have a short-term roadmap for the next 12 months, create a long-term roadmap with loftier goals. One time per year, you should validate you’re moving closer to your long-term plans and refresh your short-term plan. Usually December or January is the perfect timeframe to line up with the calendar year.

Creating Roadmaps for your Success

Local Union loves assisting in roadmaps with small businesses! We’re able to come in with fresh perspective and help businesses see what is needed to reach their goals.

If you’re deep in the day-to-day and struggling to see the bigger picture of where you’re heading, reach out to us and we’ll find time to get you on track. Roadmaps are a powerful tool and extremely useful in organizing your thoughts, in terms of prioritization. You won’t believe how quickly it starts to build accountability in your business overnight.

Growing your business? Read our blog, Scaling your Business the Right Way, here.

Using Roadmaps to Hit your Goals