SMART Goals and Why You & Your Business Needs Them S (Specific) M (Measurable) A (Achievable) R (Relevant) T (Time Bound)

Memories of a Great Family Italian Trip
This past summer we took a family trip to Italy. I wanted to stress the importance of family and family culture. Seeing where my Dad came from and my wife’s parents came from in Italy was an important cultural experience to pass along to my kids and my grandson, Aiden. We learned a lot, including how to slow down and start communicating with each other in a meaningful way.

For Aiden, culture meant having PASTA every day!

Family culture influences the way each family member thinks, feels, and acts on a daily basis. Your family culture influences things like your moral compass, beliefs, values, and traditions.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

• Setting S●M●A●R●T Goals For Success
• Why Impacts of COVID On Team Building
• Is This A Good Time To Start A Business?
• Creating Family Culture With Aiden

REVIEW

“It is a pleasure to work with Tim. He readily relies on his strong overall business acumen to align, translate and communicate strategic activates into expected financial outcomes. In addition, he identifies and executes key day to day activates to achieve desired financial outcomes. Tim is able to roll up his sleeves and dig into details as well as provide key summaries. He has been an asset to our organization and would be a great addition as a CFO on demand for your company.”

Jeff Minnick – Board Member –
Hitchcock Center For Woman

Impacts Of COVID On Team Building

Before the pandemic, offices were the home of teams and teamwork. Employees who used to collaborate in person now had to interact on Zoom. While this initially seemed to work, now business owners are concerned about the loss of intangibles that make Teamwork effective

Three things that affect Team Building and ultimately your company’s growth and employee development:

1. Less Back And Forth Idea Sharing With Colleagues Resulting In A Decreased Number Of New Ideas.
Whereas a formal zoom meeting can be useful, after those online meetings, without face-to-face employee interaction, new and creative ideas/solutions never take shape stunting innovative growth. Businesses are discovering that projects take longer, training is tougher, and employers say their workers appear less connected.

A healthy business model is a network of individuals who are proud of their contribution and importance to the company’s success. Team Building is an important part of this process.

2. Supervision And Learning From Others Is Not Done Well Offsite.
Studies have shown that the office environment is essential for employee learning and growth. While some employees thrive in an unstructured or remote environment, others need supervision, monitoring and guidance. Another important considerati on that aligns employees for or against remote work is their experience. The least experienced workers feel less productive during remote work and need an office environment to learn and engage.

Team building is to encourage productivity, success, and growth through collaboration, passion, and business culture. Offsite employees reported difficulties feeling engaged or excited about work, as well as bringing new ideas to the table.

3. People Are Not Meant To Work/Be Alone.
Socialization is necessary to build meaningful work-relations, learning and developing new skills through the experiences of others. Price Waterhouse Coopers International provided an insight into the purpose of having employees work
in an office environment:

• The office increases productivity of staff
• It provides an effective space to engage with the clients
• Office enables the staff to work in collaboration
• It also ensures to maintain the company culture and values

Your business should reconsider in-person team building practices that can’t occur on Zoom if you want to increase employee motivation, relationships, collaboration, creativity, and culture.

CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANT

Tim has been in accounting since 1988 and specializes in strategic planning to help small business clients achieve their goals. Through helping establishing these goals and objectives of our clients, we focus on the key performance indicators that will help drive performance and improve bottom line results. Tim has extensive experience in retail, healthcare, non profit, and public accounting.

Tim has an innate ability to cut through the noise and discover the true cause of the problem. He is an expert at implementing cost effective solutions to improve profit and eliminate the source of problem.

Bank Reconciliation
Successful businesses know and monitor their numbers. Having this information in a timely manner can save you a lot of stress, grief and potentially hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Don’t be lazy on this.
• Yes, you need to reconcile your account(s) every month!
• A separate person from the one paying the bills needs to be doing this.
• Helps prevent fraud.
• Positive pay on your account to avoid fraud.
• All accounts with payments should be reconciled
i. Line of credit
ii. Credit cards

Is This A Good Time To Start Another Business

You’re probably thinking “Wait a minute, I already have a Business Tim. What are you suggesting?”

In the past few months, experts have predicted a potential recession in 2023. Meanwhile, inflation continues to rise and consumer prices remain high. While the prospect of an economic downturn can be worrying, indicators suggest it’s still a good time to start a Business.

Starting a new business can feel like taking a step into the unknown, but with the right strategy and mindset, both costs and risks can be reduced significantly provided you do it in a smart way.

With the internet all you need is a website, a product or service and a good Business Plan. There is no need for employees or even a physical office. You can run a business without the overhead of an office. There is no longer a need for a substantial in-person office with many employees.

Case Study For Starting A New Business
I was talking to a Marketi ng Consultant who told me how he helped start a new business within an existi ng business. This was a marina and if your boat ran out of gas, you hit a rock or you had engine problems that caused the propeller or motor to stop working, you could call him and he’d go out to help you. He did this about 4 or 5 times a year and made a couple of hundred bucks. The concept he had sounded a lot like a service the AAA  provided.

A new company was created and named the BAA (the Boater’s Assistance Association), so his customers could easily relate to this new service with something they were familiar with. Of course, there was a carefully thought-out Business Plan.

Membership levels were created, a website was put up, target markets were identified, marketing content was created and implemented. In the first month 28 memberships were sold at an average sale of $297 each, totaling $8,316… plus another $2,700 was sold in add-on sales for life jackets and boating emergency kits. He is on track to sell 300 memberships in the first year of launching this program.

What Are SMART Goals

SMART GOAL BENEFITS

There are a lot of benefits to setting S.M.A.R.T. goals, which is why you should consider adding them to your business toolbox.

✔ It helps give you an objective. In doing this, you are able to identify strengths, weaknesses and how to measure progress.

✔ Provides motivation to succeed. When you know where the goal line is, you’ll want to work to meet or beat it.

✔ It will be challenging and force you out of your comfort zone. Ultimately, the S.M.A.R.T. goal is a useful tool to remain focused in attaining your goal.

✔ SMART goals can be used in employee performance reviews. Successful managers establish goals and objectives so employees are on the same page and know what they need to accomplish in order to achieve the desired results.

How To Discover The Hidden Wealth in Your Business And Turn Those Opportunities Into Instant Profits

Did you find the CASE STUDY for starting a new business interesting? Ron Romano is a Business and Marketing Consultant who developed that strategy and has helped hundreds of businesses increase sales and profits.

Ron has agreed to host a webinar for my clients to reveal the process on “How To discover the Hidden Wealth in Your Business…and How To Get It.

If you are interested in attending this webinar please send me an email at tim@castriganocpa.com and I will confirm at date with Ron.

A S.M.A.R.T. goal is defined by its five key aspects or elements. Without all aspects, you might be goal setting, but not effectively creating a plan for success. Let’s take a closer look at the five elements of S.M.A.R.T. goals.

Specific
Specific goals have a desired outcome that is clearly understood. This might be a sales number or a product/service rollout goal. No matter what it is, the goal should be clearly articulated so that everyone is on the same page with the objective. Define what will be accomplished and the actions to be taken to accomplish the goal.

Measurable
These are the numbers used with the goal. You need to have a quantifiable objective so that you can track progress. Define what tracking data will be used to measure the goal and measure it regularly.

Achievable
Goals need to be realistic in order to maintain your interest to trying to achieve them. Setting lofty goals is good, but you may want to break them down into smaller, bite-sized chunks. If the goal is not doable, you may need to first ramp up resources to give yourself a shot at success.

Relevant
Goals should be aligned with the mission of the company. Don’t set goals just as an exercise for something to do. One way to determine if the goal is relevant is to define the key benefit to the organization.

Time-Bound
Goals should have a deadline. A goal without a deadline doesn’t do much. How can you identify success or failure? This is why S.M.A.R.T. goals set a final date. This doesn’t mean that all the work is done, but it means that you can evaluate the success of the endeavor and set new goals.