An business owner uses different combination of indicators to measure his/her business performance according to the nature of business, stage of development and so on.
Because of the change in internal (such as change in nature of business, business move into a new stage of development, etc...) and external (such as change in competition environment, new opportunities emerged, etc...), a business owner may use a different set of indicators to measure the success of his/her companies.
First you must separate out large, publicly owned, firms with diverse shareholdings. Here the clear motivation of the owners (the shareholders) is financial profit and a dividend stream. For SMEs, where ownership and control are close (and often the same individual or small group of individuals) it is often best to think of the owner as satisficing across multiple objectives. Commonly identified objectives include; maintaining independence, a desire to pass the business on to the family, basic survival, etc. Here we can think of the owner as seeking to achieve these multiple goals subject to a minimum profit constraint. The latter is often ignored by non-economists, but in the long-run you have to make a financial return to stay in business. Formally, it might be written: Maximise Independence subject to the minimum profit that keeps you in the lifestyle you are happy with. Also, you need to separate out short-term objectives and long-run objectives. Hope this helps? Cheers, Marc