A question I am often asked both formally, and also informally by friends and family, is “why did you start your business?”. It’s a question I love to get asked and the reason is because I know why I started in business.

I found myself dissatisfied with what was conventional and traditional in terms of working. I did not want to work a 9 to 5 for the rest of my life. I wanted the freedom that a business brought, I wanted the flexibility and I wanted the potential and resource that having a business in my hands allowed me to do.

I challenge anybody to ensure that hey have a quick answer to the question of ‘why’ regarding any area of your life.

There are three questions that I believe that you need to ask yourself before starting business or any project or major area of your life.

1. What do I want to achieve?

What is the purpose of you getting into business and starting this project? The answer to this question is not always money. Many people start something because they are passionate about it, because they enjoy it, or for any other benefit that they can list.

I have actually started projects and the outcome that I have wanted is to have a business that I could give someone and potentially create an income for them.

Everything we do in life needs goals and it doesn’t have to be a formal document dozens of pages long, that outlines exactly what you are trying to achieve. Sometimes it comes down to a single statement.

I have a friend who started a business and the simple goal that he wanted to achieve was to pay his mortgage payment every month through this additional income source.

He wasn’t trying to rule the world of business, but rather just produce enough income to ensure that his mortgage payment was covered every month by this extra business that he started.

2. What are the key milestones?

Whilst your motivation can be summed up in a single sentence as to why you started the business, I believe it is equally as important to list key milestones to ensure that you are on that path. These could be financial milestones of income levels you’d like to achieve each month, they could be listed as the amount of sales by a certain timeframe, or the completion of key parts of a project.

Setting milestones in a business or project for me is like eating an elephant one bite at a time. I want to be able to measure steps that I am taking and also be able to celebrate as I reach these key points in the development.

I personally often find the development of a new project or business to be a long drawn-out process without much reward and the reality is that this is often the case. Setting minor milestones to achieve helps me to keep motivated and moving towards that initial goal.

3. What is your exit plan?

Stephen Covey says that one of the seven habits of a highly effective person is to begin with the end in mind. I don’t believe it is pessimistic to create an exit plan for your business or project before you even begin working on it.

Your exit plan may be to sell the business, or it could be to automate parts of it to remove you from the equation or even to employ a full-time manager to take over the business so you can begin on another project.

It’s not a pessimistic plan of demise for your business or project. It is rather an optimistic approach to what level you reach when you call this business a success.

Three questions to ask and with those three answers you are ready to start.