Setting goals can help you move forward and measure what you want to achieve. Many times hwever we set an unrealistic goal and end up getting frustrated when it doesn’t come to fruition. It can be difficult to maintain an unrealistic goal if you don’t have the right support and guidance to help you reach it.
Here’s some suggestions to help you set better goals to achieve success with your business in 2016. Please leave other suggestions in the comments, I’d love to hear other tricks to tackle your goals!
*Set Clear Goals
It’s very important that the goals you set for yourself are clear and something you could easily share with a colleague (they would understand it). Don’t set fuzzy goals. An example of a clear goal would be: Writing a 3 paragraph blog post once a week (have it due every Tues at 5pm, publish on Wed at 12pm).
Just saying that you’d like to do more YouTube videos or blog posts isn’t enough, you need to be explicit and write down exactly what you want to accomplish.
Put the goals in a place in your office where you can see them daily or weekly if possible. I’ve read that it’s good to move things around at your desk every week or so, so that you still can SEE them. After a while, you can’t really see a piece of paper, especially if it’s been sitting in the same place for week. Mix it up!
*Have Someone Hold You Accountable!
This could be a colleague, a mentor, or a business coach. Personally I found it hard to hold myself accountable to goals and noticed a huge change when I promise someone I’ll get something done. Be sure to maintain this accountability on some kind of schedule. Perhaps meeting with your accountability person every 2 weeks or once a month. Explain and give valid reasons why you didn’t achieve a goal and have your accountability person help you re-evaluate the goal to make it more attainable. Also, celebrate when you have accomplished your goals!
*Look at Your Habits Over the Last Year
Did you have hurdles in your business that caused you to slow down or not accomplish what you wanted? I’ve seen it happen with myself and colleagues, we become afraid of finishing that one step that will lead to bigger and greater things such as hiring an assistant, investing in software that will free up our time, partnering up with a colleague, and many more.
Take a look and examine those hurdles and figure out some strategies to help you break free to them. Incorporate the strategies into your goals.
*Use Visual Aids
Having visual triggers can help keep you motivated as well as provide you with a daily dose of inspiration. I wanted to double my web hosting customer base over the last year. My office mate wanted to help me, so he created a graph to reflect my current customers and how many more I needed to reach my goal. Every time I got a new customer, I would physically stamp a little deer on the chart. I can’t tell you how excited I got very time I signed up a new customer and had the chance to add more deer!
*Break Goals into Bite-Size Chunks
Don’t forget to break the goals into weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals. This can help you reflect on data and numbers in different ways and give you an overall sense of where your business is going. Many times, business is seasonal, maybe you have a slow time in Quarter 1, but always double your sales in Quarter 2. Perhaps you sell a lot of products around holidays, so you can set more timely goals and plan to market for those occasions!
*Reward Yourself
If you do make your goals, be sure to have a way to reward yourself. This could be as simple as taking a day off, getting a massage, or doing an activity you love, but don’t make time for (golf, hiking, skiing, camping, etc). Sometimes the best rewards are making memories with family and friends.
Dream up those goals out and be creative. Imagine that they are as important as the supporting posts in your house. Without the posts, the house would collapse. They are necessary for a house and how it functions, just like in your business!
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