Monday, January 4, 2010

Get Ready for the New Year

I know that 2009 was a rough year for several of us for many different reasons. We all had one thing or another to overcome, but we have survived for another year and are still moving forward. I have started setting some of my goals for this next year and I took something from teaching to do this.

Usually my goals are simple and so vague they are awesome. I will get in shape, I will lose weight, I will focus on growing my business. Great! Now, how do I do this. When setting our yearly goals for teaching (see I really am not a novice at this) we have to make SMART goals. This stands for:
S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Attainable
R = Realistic
T = Time-based
I'm sure many of you have heard this before, but it is important. If you are going to set a goal, you need to meet all of these. I can't just say I want to lose weight. Answer these 5 questions and you have a goal that you are more likely to meet. How much weight (realistic is part of this), what will you do to achieve this, and when will you be done. Time is one of the most important elements (in my opinion). Give yourself a deadline. If you don't, you will put it off.

So, I took one of my goals, I will grow my business, and I made it more specific. I broke this goal into certain things I want to accomplish. I want to have 2 wholesale customers, gross $____ in monthly revenue, have 10 more subscribers to my blog, and the list goes on. But, each was specific, it has a number, so I can measure what I'm doing and I made my goals attainable. Would I like more than 2 wholesale customers? Absolutely, I would love it, but I don't even have a wholesale price list made, so let's be realistic. I also set dates when I would like to have each goal accomplished and "by the end of the year" is not a good date. Give yourself too much time and you'll forget or procrastinate.

The next thing I did was look at each of my goals and write the steps I need to take to reach each one. If I'm going to wholesale, I think a wholesale price list is going to be necessary. I also set a deadline for each of my steps to lead me up to meeting my goals. By doing this, I have broken this huge task up into manageable pieces and I can focus on what I need to do. I won't just be floundering around and accomplishing nothing. I can now set my monthly, weekly, and daily goals (guess what I do every Sunday) and I will be focused and I will be proactive in my business and personal life.

Good Luck to everyone in the coming year. I would like to know what some of your goals are and how you went about making them SMART goals.

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