It’s a New Year and if you’re like most of the population you’ve already been thinking about setting goals and milestones for your business.
Maybe you didn’t book as many clients as you expected in the previous year. Or you didn’t bring in the income you expect from your business. Whatever the reason, i’ll be sharing the simple exercise I use for setting goals and milestones in my event planning business, and how you can too.
Whether your business is just getting started or you’re raking in the revenue, it is important to set goals for your business. Research shows that people who explicitly make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t. Setting goals in your business also allows you to check the “health” of your business periodically, and fix pending issues before they become a major problem.
[bctt tweet=”The key to achieving your goals is planning. ” username=”event_u”]
STEP 1: Outline what you want to achieve
Take the time to think about what it is you would like to achieve this year. Is it to book 5 new clients each month? Make $30,000 by the end of the year? Or have at least 3 repeat customers from your existing bookings?
Once you know what you would like to achieve, write this down. You can use an agenda, a vision board, or an online app such as Evernote. The idea is to make your goals “real” by moving them from your thoughts to “paper”.
STEP 2: Break your goals down into milestones
The number #1 reason why most people don’t achieve their goals is that they are unattainable. Be realistic when setting goals for your business. Most importantly, always break your goals down into milestones, that is, the steps you’ll need to take to achieve them.
For Example: If you’re setting goals to achieve more income, let’s say to make $12,000 by the end of the year, you can break those goals down into milestones of making $1000 each month.
These “mini goals” helps to provide you with a feasible timeline by which you can check-in periodically to measure if you’re getting closer.
STEP 3: Schedule check-in dates for a goal review
Once you’ve outlined your goals and created your milestones, choose a consistent timeline for reviewing your goals. This could be weekly, monthly, every 3 months, every 6 months. Choose a time-frame that works best for you and add these dates to your calendar. These dates will provide you with a reminder to review how far along you are. For example, did you meet your monthly revenue target? If not, what could you have done differently?
Use this check-ins to also congratulate yourself if you achieved a milestone, this means you are one step closer to where you want to be.
Be sure to also Download the Goals & Milestones Worksheet to start outlining your goals today.
Lao Tzu had it all figured out for us when he said “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one a single step”.
