Achieve Your Business Goals

No matter where you are in the process of being your own boss – whether you just started freelancing or have been running your small business for over a decade – you should know what your business goals are.

It’s easy to forget about setting goals – when you first start your own business, you usually just have one: make enough money to stay afloat.

But just like your business needs a plan, it also needs goals if you want it to grow and thrive.

Having business goals isn’t the same as having a business plan. Goals go beyond knowing what you want your hourly rate to be or how much you need to make to stay in the black. It’s about knowing where you want to be – in a month, a year, a decade.

But setting goals is easy. Achieving them is a little more difficult.

Create actionable steps to work toward you goals.

Start by making a list of your business goals. Divide them up into immediate, short-term, and long term.

Evaluate what needs to happen to reach each goal and come up with a list of actionable steps to take.

Some plans can be put immediately into action; think about what you can start changing today to make your business work better in a month. Once you have your immediate goals achieved, it will be easier to work towards your long-term ones.

Take it one step at a time.

I’ll admit, I’m terrible at this one. But if you don’t want to get overwhelmed from the get-go, you have to be systematic. (And you have to make sure you’re leaving time for your current work to get done as well!)

Set aside time each week to devote to long-term goals. Start with development: brainstorming, networking, researching. Create a timeline and a plan before you start working towards each goal.

The temptation to dive in is strong, but being systematic will help you get there faster in the long run.

Reevaluate.

This one is especially true with long-term goals. Your business will change, your life will change, and you will change. So, given all that, won’t your goals change as well?

Of course they will. So it’s important to be flexible and reevaluate every few months. Maybe a project will have to be put on the backburner for a little while. Maybe your business will grow faster than you expected and you’ll have to hire a new employee to take on the extra work.