3 Easy Steps for Goal Setting As An Entrepreneur

Goal setting is quite crucial to your success as an entrepreneur. I think anyone who has been in the entrepreneur and small business worlds for a millisecond realizes that. When people shift from having traditional or corporate jobs, goal setting starts to look a little different. Sometimes we even become lackadaisical once the goal setting is for reaching our own goals instead of the goals meant for acquiring success for someone else. Why do you think that is?

When you first start off you have a fire in your soul and passion in your eyes. But nobody said being an entrepreneur was a breeze. Yes, there are boundless rewards that come from being an entrepreneur and doing things on your own terms: flexible schedules, flexible work environments, no caps on the amount of income you can earn, etc. You still have to put in the work though, and after burning the midnight oil for so many years for someone else to attain success, sometimes after that initial spark of entrepreneurial fire goes out it can be hard to refocus our lens and take another shot.

Entrepreneurial goal setting involves creating action plans. It is not enough to merely say I want to make X amount of money next month, or acquire X number of new clients. Your goals have to have action steps. Those steps also need to be broken down into bite size pieces because it helps feel a sense of accomplishment and progress towards your goals. Without someone behind you to say why hasn’t this or that been executed yet, it’s too easy to feel defeated and start binging Netflix when you should be pounding the pavement and shaking hands, so to speak.

So here’s 3 simple steps to goal setting success for entrepreneurs:

1-Write down your goals for the year, then for each quarter, then monthly.

Again, simply stating the goal isn’t enough by itself, and having something as far out as a year makes it too easy to put things off. You don’t have to elaborate in this step, but you do need to write down all of them for the year, then which ones are to be reached each quarter, and then each month. It helps to do these on separate pieces of paper.

For an oversimplification and easy math, if you wanted to get 60 new clients this year, you would have 60 listed as the yearly goal, 15 listed as quarterly, and 5 listed as monthly.

2-Write down the action steps

After you know what your goals are, and which ones need to be accomplished each month, you’re ready to break it down into action steps. What actions need to be taken to reach your yearly goal of 60 new clients? Write them down. Now break those actions into which ones need to be done for each quarter, respectively, then monthly.

3-Execute your action plan

Now you know if you execute each monthly plan you WILL reach your goal. If you fall behind one month don’t skip steps. If you needed to have 15 meetings and you only did 10, add those 5 to the next month. This will ensure you stay on track, and is much more attainable in these bite size goals!

In addition to these, if you’re the type of person who does well with having a team to help motivate you, but still want to have the flexibility of working for yourself, talk to me to see if running a Farmers agency may be right for you!