Would you like to be more successful in business and your personal life? Are you looking for ways to reach your financial goals and your personal goals? You can succeed in your own business or career and lead the kind of life you wish for by following the simple principles described below.
Have you ever wondered why some people accomplish far more than others in life? Why some people accomplish great things, while others plod slowly along, never really getting anywhere? While it’s tempting to attribute other people’s accomplishments to good luck, good contacts, and deep pockets, in reality, most people who achieve great things in life don’t have any more luck, friends or money than anyone else. So what do they have? What makes them different?
The answer is goals – and a system for achieving those goals.
Ok, I can hear you groaning now. You’ve heard all this stuff about goals before. And it’s a nice theory. You even set some goals once or twice. But you’re no closer to expanding your business now or getting ahead in your career than you were a year ago. So what good are goals?
The trick to making goal setting work for your business or in your career is to understand yourself. Why do you want to reach any particular goal? Are you hoping for significant, long-term financial gains? Or is it really the power? And how important in the grand scheme of things in your personal life is either the money or the power? Do you want to build a business that will give you and your family a comfortable lifestyle? Or do you want to build an empire? Would you prefer working for a company that pays well and provides good benefits? What would you like to be doing 10 or 20 years from now? Picture it in your mind’s eye. Where would you like to live? What do you see as the most important values in your life then? And what are you willing to do and to give up now to achieve those goals?
Write those goals down in a table like the one below. Make your goals specific and measurable. For instance, instead of “Buy a House,” write “Buy a $750,000 home.” Instead of “Put kids through college,” write, “Have $300,000 available for college costs.” Instead of “Increase sales,” write, “Increase sales to $5 million in 3 years.”
Next to each goal, write down why each goal is important. Don’t skip this step. The importance of the goal is what’s going to motivate you to complete it. Finally, assign a priority to each goal.
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Long-Term Goals |
What Makes This Goal Important? |
Priority |
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Next, consider exactly what you have to do to reach those long-term goals. Think in terms of smaller achievements you have to make along the way to reach those goals. And be realistic. For instance, if you want to buy a $750,000 house, what down payment would you need? How much money would you need to support the mortgage payments and the house, itself? And what milestones do you have to achieve in your business or career to get to that level? Work it all out on paper just like you might if you were planning to drive cross-country or throwing a huge party.
Finally, consider what steps you need to take to reach each milestone in your career or business. What skills do you need to acquire? What do you have to accomplish to move up in your career? What percent of the market for your products or services will you need to capture to reach your long-term goals? What specific steps do you need to take to capture that market? Do you need to hire employees to reach that level? Win contracts from specific customers? Open offices in other locations?
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List these action items in step-by-step order and assign a deadline to each. If you have employees, delegate both the responsibility and the power to get each task done – to key people on your staff. If you are the only person in your organization, or the only one capable of carrying out your plan at this time, pick the first task and complete it, then move on to the next. Stay focused on achieving one small milestone after the other and before you know it, you’ll be living your dreams.
