SMALL BUSINESS GOAL SETTING IS THE KEY TO 2013 SUCCESS

Setting SMART goals is an important part of Better Life Maids Small Business Goal setting strategy

You will hear it time and time again from successful people. Setting goals is important, maybe the most important thing you can do to ensure your success. Well they are pretty successful, so perhaps you should start heeding their advice. Small business goal setting is no different than setting personal goals. What gets measured, gets done, and if you set goals make sure they are S.M.A.R.T goals. S.M.A.R.T. refers to goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Framed. We use this system to plan out each month of the year with a detailed 5 year business plan that we update each January. Creating S.M.A.R.T small business goal setting has been a large part of our ongoing success, and helps us keep focussed on becoming a better, more customer focussed company each and every day.

Specific goals are just that. “I am going to grow my business by 150 recurring clients in 2013” is a specific goal. Their are 52 weeks in a year and that allows you to break it down to about 3 net recurring clients a week. That is pretty specific. “I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific” -Lily Tomlin.

Measurable goals are important as well. It does you no good to set a goal that is not easily quantifiable. For instance, setting the goal that “I want to build my companies social media presence” is not the same as saying “I will grow my business Facebook following by 300 fans in 2013”. That is 6 new fans a week. 24 new fans a month. All measurable. You need to create simple and concrete goals that allow you to reach incremental success, and celebrate small wins along the way. Nothing creates success like success. So measure those small wins each week.

Achievable goals are just as important. At one time or another most of us have set an unachievable goal. The result is invariably disappointing. Setting unachievable goals is worse than setting no goals at all. Stating that you want to do $1 Million in revenue in 2013 is a great goal, but can you realistically achieve it. If you are a startup business in your first year of operation, the answer is likely no. However if you are established and have a good base of revenue, perhaps that might be a worthy goal. The answer depends on what type of business you are in and many other factors. Dream big here, just have a solid road map to get you there. “If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.” –Zig Ziglar.

Realistic goals are extremely important as well. Small business goal setting is not that difference than personal goal setting. While I strongly believe that you can achieve nearly anything in life or business. I also am realistic in my approach to this. Mastery looks easy because the master puts in so many hours of practice and hard work, that what they achieve looks like it comes easy to them. It has been said that mastery of an art comes with 10,000 hours of practice. That really comes dome to 10 years of dedicated practice to a subject matter. So while you can probably become world class at whatever it is you are seeking to achieve, it may take a little longer than 2013. Just be realistic.

Time framed goals are also critically important. People tend to spend a great deal of time talking about what they want to achieve. This does no good if they don’t hold themselves to a measurable time frame. A project you start in 2013 should have a definitive start and finish time. It should have measurable intervals along the way at which you can gauge your ongoing progress. Really the most important reason to set a timed goal is to create an urgency to get started TODAY! There is no time like the present to make your dreams come true. “This very day can be the first day of your new life. It’s all your choice” Robin Sharma.

Now that you have a framework for setting your small business goals in 2013 you can take a sneak peak at the goals set for Better Life Maids St. Louis.

Better Life Maids 2013 Small Business Goal Setting Infographic