For any person, goals are important to have. As an entrepreneur, though, goals are vital to growing your business – specifically SMART goals. There is immense power in developing long-term goals, so let’s talk about how successful people use SMART goals to grow their business.
SMART Goals:
I think most people would agree that successful individuals would not be successful without setting goals – both short term and long term. Short term goals are those goals that you want to get done this week, this month, or even this year. But the long-term goals – and the effort behind them – are the ones that really boost you forward in your business. You want to make sure that all of the goals you set are SMART goals – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based.
What That Means:
To be specific with your goal, you want to determine who is going to be participating, what you want to accomplish in your goal, and why the goal is important to growing you and your business. It needs to also be measurable; that will help you determine when the goal itself is accomplished. Being an achievable goal is also important. If you start off with a goal that is financially or otherwise impossible, it will lead to discouragement and stagnation. Relevant goals ensure that the completion of the goal is actually important and worthwhile to you. Choosing a goal you are not actually passionate about will not work in your favor. Lastly, you want your goals to be time-based. Without setting a timeframe on your goal, you are much less likely to achieve it. Procrastination can take over, you can find yourself lacking motivation, any number of things can pop up. Thus, a necessary component of a great goal is a timeline in which it will be accomplished.
How This Looks:
Say you want to grow your business’s income – here is how a SMART goal could potentially look for that:
“I will increase revenue by $5,000 from second to third quarter of 2021 by signing on 10 more clients.”
This example of a SMART goal helps ensure that you will follow through and know exactly when it is achieved.
Bottom Line:
Ultimately, it is not the end results that matter when completing these goals. What matters is what you contribute to the goals. If you want to run a marathon, you have to consistently contribute to your training in order to build up to 26 miles. In that same sense, anyone can work 80 hours a week, but what are they putting into those 80 hours that is contributing to growing their business? To be successful in creating and accomplishing your goals, you have to put in the necessary work. Like we mentioned in our blog last week, you only get out of something what you put into it. Similarly, you need to put into your business what you want to receive from it – your contribution is vital to your business’s success.
If you need help with your business and the goals for it, schedule a free financial review with us. We have had amazing results with our clients because we provide real time data. Get started today on the next level of growing your business.