No matter what aspect of your life you’re talking about, goal setting is a crucial factor throughout it all. How can you make the right decisions if you don’t know where you want to go? If you’re taking a road trip, you need to know where you want to end up in order to determine what route to take to get there.
Each of the decisions you make as an entrepreneur will affect your overall goal of being successful with your business. Yet, there is more to it than just that.
You should also set goals because they can help you to make the right decisions throughout the process of getting to the next level of success. By investing the time and energy in setting goals now, you help yourself for each decision it takes to reach the end result you are hoping for. If you set some overall goals today, you can help insure that your business will be there and be prosperous throughout the future of the business. Goals now count.
While we all have the same goal of finding success in the future, we still need to set milestones to help us to get to that point. It doesn’t happen overnight!
How to Set Goals Successfully
When it comes to setting goals, there are not many of us that are very good at it. There are plenty of opportunities for mistakes to be made, but the real problem comes in how we set them as well as what we do once we set them.
For starters, it is essential to know what your goals are. Take a few minutes right now to figure this out. Simply sit down with a blank sheet of paper (yes, you can use your computer too!) and avoid all distractions for ten minutes.
Write down anything and everything that comes to your mind in regards to your goals:
- What are they?
- Where do you want to be in a year?
- Who do you want to have with you?
- Where do you see your business in five years? 20?
- What dollar amount of sales will make you happy this year?
- What do you need to make in profits to reach a new level of satisfaction each year?
All of these questions may spark ideas in your mind. Determine where your business will be in the next three years for starters, then look at longer term goals.
Some ideas to keep in mind as you’re setting your goals:
1. Write down your longest term goal. This is the place that you want to be in a number of years, or the place you need to be to achieve the success you plan to have. Give yourself a time frame for making that happen. You may want to say that you want to make your first million in two years. Or it may take many more for that to happen. Giving your goal a time frame helps to get your mind set in how to make that happen. If you leave it open ended, the long-term goals are not benefited by your actions each day, as they would be here.
2. Set smaller goals as steps to the larger one. For example, the new entrepreneur may be able to say that he wants to be in an office, set up and running within a month’s time. In six months, he plans to be running at a profit, after expenses. Determine what your steps are to reaching your goal. Make sure that you write them with time frames attached too.
3. Goals need to be specific and measurable. For example: “Within six months, I will have paid off all debt that I owe and be running in the clear. I will do this by pushing sales and not pushing any new expenditures during that time.” In this manner, you have listed not only what the goal is and the time frame to have it done, but also how you will get there.
4. You can create a visual board (either physical or digital) with pictures and words representing each of your goals. Look at those goals each day, at least one time per day. When you think it, see it, feel it, you make it happen. Seeing it will allow you to think it. Thinking about it makes it happen. Success through goals is the only way to find it.
Now that you know what your goals are, it is essential for you to make sure that they do happen.
Leave a comment below about what goals you come up with, and any other tips you have for setting and sticking to your goals. I’d love to hear from you!
