As a small business owner, you probably have many goals, and it's more than welcome. Those goals will direct your business to the right way to succeed, but they should be measurable goals to be effective otherwise how you will know whether you are on track with the objectives.

There might be a few problems with multiple goals that you want to push. One of them is you need to track all of them. Another one might be you will be confused if, in one goal, you are doing fine, in the other goal, you are off track. What does it mean for the business's real progress?

Wouldn't will better if all goals will live in harmony? Wouldn't better if we look at one goal and know the actual progress of the business? Well, this is the idea of a top-line metric, having one main goal that tells us immediately whether we are one way or not, and all other goals should hierarchically support this goal.

Now that we understand the idea, let's take it down to earth and apply it in your business. First, you need to choose one goal that you think that progress in this goal is progress in the business. For example, you can increase the revenue by 30% and reach it by spending 50% more on marketing. The total the business earned is less. It would be best if you were a bit cautious with this goal.

Let's assume that your top-line metric increases the net profit by 20%. You should ask yourself how you will achieve this goal, and You might choose to increase the average deal size by 10% and reduce operation cost by 10%. If you didn't increase the deal size but reduce the operation cost by 2%, you are still on track with your plan. Now all subgoals work in harmony toward the top-line metric. Now you know what you want to achieve and how to get there.

Of course, you can also split the subgoals into their subgoals. The idea is to set a simpler subgoal that progress in the subgoal is a good approximation for the parent goal, and you can assume any progress in the subgoal also means progress in the parent goal.

The top-line metric is like a lighthouse that shows you the best path to reach your business goals. It doesn't mean that you have only one goal, and it helps to structure the goals and make sure that the progress in all of them takes you to success.