How to FIND Your Best Goals Ever and Crush 2025

As we approach a new year, it’s natural to start reflecting on what you want to achieve and how to get there. Over the past few months, I’ve spent a lot of time writing, talking, and thinking about goal setting.

As a fractional CFO, you might expect my focus to be on managing money—understanding cash flow, profit margins, and how to allocate financial resources. And that’s true. But as the old saying goes, time is money. Nowhere is this more relevant than in a startup.

If time is money, then a CFO’s job isn’t just about managing dollars—it’s also about managing time. Helping a startup use its time wisely can have as much, if not more, impact than the decisions it makes about money.

Why Time Is Your Most Valuable Asset

I spend a lot of time speaking with early-stage founders. These are some of the brightest, most motivated, and talented individuals you’ll meet. But there’s a common theme I’ve noticed among many of them: they’re so buried in the day-to-day grind of running their businesses that they rarely take the time to step back and think about what they should be focusing on.

This leads to a dangerous trap. Founders often end up spending their time on things they’re comfortable with or enjoy doing, rather than what truly needs to be done. If time is money, then spending time poorly is just as harmful as making a bad financial investment.

Here’s a simple example to drive this point home:
If you have three team members, each forgoing $100,000 in salary to work on your startup, that’s $300,000 worth of annual opportunity cost—or “time cost.” If you’re spending that time on low-impact activities, it’s no different than burning through $300,000 of investment capital.

That’s why learning to set the right goals—and invest your time wisely—is critical.

The First Step: Sourcing Goal Ideas

When it comes to finding and setting goals for your business, the first step is sourcing ideas. Where do you even begin? Here are four practical ways to identify meaningful goals:

1. Ask an Expert

One of the simplest ways to source great goal ideas is to seek advice from someone with more experience. If you already have advisors or mentors, start with them. If not, consider leveraging professional networks like LinkedIn or specialized communities.

For example, I’m part of an online group called Fractional United, which connects businesses with fractional executives in finance, sales, growth, and product. For a relatively small investment, you could ask someone in a group like this to audit your business and suggest areas for improvement. Their insights could reveal valuable priorities you might not have considered.

2. Learn from Comparable Companies

Another excellent source of goal ideas is benchmarking against similar companies, both private and public. By studying businesses in your industry, you can uncover metrics, ratios, or margins that might indicate where you’re falling short.

I recently worked with a brand that had a cost of goods sold (COGS) at 50% of revenue. To the founder, this seemed reasonable. But with industry benchmarks in hand, it was clear to me that this was far too high, limiting their ability to achieve profitability. Without those reference points, they had no idea this was an issue that they should even be focused on.

3. Tap Into Your Team’s Knowledge

If you’ve hired well, your team likely knows more about their specific areas than you do. They’re closer to the action and can often see issues or opportunities more clearly than you can. By asking your team for their input, you’ll uncover potential goals that align with their expertise—and you’ll get their buy-in for making them happen.

4. Conduct a Bottleneck Analysis

Finally, one of the most effective ways to identify goals is through a bottleneck analysis. This involves mapping out your business’s core performance formula to identify weak points that are holding you back.

For an eCommerce business, performance is typically determined by three key metrics:

• Traffic: The number of visitors coming to your website.
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of those visitors who make a purchase.
• Average Order Value (AOV): The average amount a customer spends per transaction.

Your total revenue can be calculated as:
Traffic x Conversion Rate x AOV = Revenue

If you’re looking to grow your business, this formula is your roadmap. By identifying which of these three metrics is the bottleneck, you can focus your resources where they’ll have the greatest impact.

For example:

• If your traffic is low, your goal might focus on increasing brand awareness through paid ads or SEO.
• If your conversion rate is below industry benchmarks, you might prioritize improving website usability, product descriptions, or checkout speed.
• If your AOV is lagging, your focus could shift to upselling, cross-selling, or bundling products.

Instead of trying to improve everything at once, allocate your time and resources disproportionately to the metric with the biggest opportunity for improvement. Fixing even one bottleneck can unlock outsized results for your business.

Refining Your Goals

Once you’ve compiled a list of potential goals, the next step is refining them. Two key strategies can help:

1. Skills Alignment

Ask yourself: does your team have the skills to execute this goal well?
I wrote about the importance of aligning your goals with your teams' skills in this blog, where I explain how to map out your team’s skills and align them with your priorities. The idea is simple: focus on goals your team is equipped to tackle effectively.

2. Think Like a CFO

Next, evaluate each goal like a CFO would—by calculating its return on investment (ROI).

Here’s a simple formula:

• Return: What is the potential improvement in profit you could achieve?
• Investment: How much time and money will it take to achieve this goal?

Divide the return by the investment to determine the ROI. Goals with a high ROI should rise to the top of your priority list.

Setting Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

Once you’ve refined your list of goals, it’s time to set objectives. This is where the OKR framework comes in.

• Objectives: Define what you want to achieve. Objectives should be bold, qualitative, and inspiring.
• Key Results: Define how you’ll measure success. Key Results should be specific, measurable outcomes that track your progress.

I wrote about my method for setting OKRs in last week's blog which you can check out here. 

Final Thoughts

If you take one thing away from this blog, let it be this: spending your time poorly is just as bad as spending your money poorly. As you plan for 2025, don’t just chase shiny objects or focus on what’s easy. Be intentional.

Use the strategies above to source and refine your goals, and take the time to align your team around them. You’ll not only save time and resources—you’ll set yourself up for meaningful, measurable success.