Business Planning Suggestions for 2025 - 3

 So now you've got your most important goals written down.

 (By the way, don't be shy about setting financial goals. I know a lot of Catholic men who struggle with this. They forget that it's not money, but the love of money, that's evil. We're called to be good stewards of what God has given us. Just think of money like that and move on. Don't get hung up here. So I hope one of your important goals is financial.)

What now? Well, as I mentioned, these "long-term" goals should be big enough so they take at least ten years or so to accomplish (maybe longer). There's no magic to the ten years, as opposed to let's say nine or eleven or twelve, but we need a definite number to work with and ten will do the trick. We're going to break down our big goals into bite-sized pieces or steps, then put dates on when we want to accomplish each step. You've already done the hard part in coming up with the goals, so while the rest of our planning will take some time, it's actually easier - even fun.

(The dates are really important, by the way, so don't skip this; don't avoid doing this. Putting a date on something gives you a deadline. Without a deadline, you won't be as effective in working towards your goal. This isn't rocket science, so don't make it into rocket science. If you're not sure what the date "should" be, just make one up. There's no "should" here.)

But before we start, I want to make sure our big goals are worthy of our efforts by bringing in another cardinal virtue: justice. Let's spend a few minutes and let justice play its part in our planning. We'll start with a definition:

Justice: a moral quality or habit which perfects the will and inclines it to render to each and to all what belongs to them. Justice teaches us to give to another what belongs to him (The Catholic Encyclopedia).

We're going to give our four important goals a once over in the light of justice. It will help us make sure our goals aren't just about us.

So look at each goal now and be strict with yourself. Here's a simple example of what to do:

Let's say you want to make more money and save more money. Be specific: write down how much you want/need to make, e.g., $50,000, $110,000, etc. and save $200,000, $500,000, $2 million - whatever - within ten years. (Don't worry, you're not being either greedy or unrealistic if you shoot high here. After inflation, it'll only be worth maybe half of what it's worth now, if that much!) Now how is that goal going to help you be a better husband, father and help you be more charitable? How will striving for this goal help you to perfect your will and incline you to render to each and to all what belongs to them?

We Catholics can't afford to be selfish or self-centered. We're called on by a loving God to love Him and to love our neighbor. Love compels us to be generous. This financial goal of yours can help you to give to others what "belongs" to them.

What belongs to your spouse, your kids? How about your neighbor? Everything and nothing. 

Everything in the sense that, to the extent that you succeed in making more money or saving more money, you want to be thinking "give" not "get." Nothing in the sense that we're only stewards of the goods that God gives us. So if we're going to amass more goods - and there's nothing wrong with working hard, saving money and investing wisely - there's got to be more to it than just getting rich...or retiring early...or living the good life. You get the point.

Okay, so you've exposed those important goals to the light of justice. Now what?

Now we take each important goal and set five-year objectives. Remember, we've got long-term goals here. That means goals big enough, challenging enough, that they'll take ten years or so to accomplish. Now split that time-frame in half and write down where you should be in five years to get to the ten year goal you've set.

Financial goals or physical fitness/health goals are probably the easiest to work with here. Let's say you want to be out of debt and have $1 million in the bank in ten years - all along devoting 10% of your gross earnings to help others (remember, give, not get: it's not just about you). So in five years, you'll probably want to figure on having something like $500,000 in the bank. (It's actually less, because as you build up savings, the earnings on your increased savings increase too. That's how the power of compounding works; but let's keep it simple for now and not get distracted by that.)

Same goes for the physical/health type of goal. Want to lose weight, gain strength, have more energy? Set the ten-year goal very high. Be ambitious. Then split the difference for your five-year objective.

If you've got a goal like "being a better husband and father," or "improving my spiritual life" you're going to have to work at this a bit to come up with a clear, specific five-year objective. But that's only because you may be stating the goal in too vague or generic a form. So here are some thoughts on how to make these sorts of goals more specific.

First, remember that things like being loving, generous, caring, etc. ultimately come from the heart. So you can just go right out and be more loving, generous and caring right now - today. You may not need ten years to accomplish this goal. Really.

On the other hand, if you're not spending enough time with your family and just can't seem to get off the dime to set aside the time you need, that might be something that could actually quantify and that might take a bit of time to  accomplish. Maybe you start with getting home for dinner at least three nights a week. But - oops - you can't do  that with your present job. So then maybe changing your job becomes part of that goal.

Stuff that requires changing jobs, making more money to cover your expenses while you put less time in at the office can be pretty darn challenging. Most of us might think they're impossible. But that's just the sort of goal you'll want to set. Something really ambitious and daring.

And that brings us to the fourth cardinal virtue - fortitude. Fortitude will help us be more ambitious and daring.

Fortitude is a bit more complex than the other three. It's not just "courage." So I'm going to quote (again from the Catholic Encyclopedia) a passage that discusses this virtue. A Catholic man, when he practices the virtue of fortitude, performs an exercise...

"...in moral courage against the evil spirit of the times, against improper fashions, against human respect, against the common tendency to seek at least the comfortable, if not the voluptuous. We need courage also to be patient under poverty or privation, and to make laudable struggle to rise in the social scale. It requires fortitude to mount above the dead level of average Christianity into the region of magnanimity, and if opportunity allow it, of magnificence (ed: the doing of something great), which are the allied virtues of fortitude, while another is perseverance, which tolerates no occasional remissness, still less occasional bouts of dissipation to relieve the strain of high-toned morality and religion." 

There's a lot packed into that paragraph. In fact, you could write a book about what these words are really saying. Read it carefully a few times. It's rich with meaning and frankly exhorts us to practice the sort of true courage we need in this world, as Catholic gentlemen, to accomplish our important goals.

In any case, fortitude will spur us on and sustain us as we formulate and decide to pursue these most important, most ambitious goals. And with fortitude in mind, we'll move on, in the next installment, to finally putting goals into the form they'll need to provide the foundation for not only a business plan, but a plan for...

life.