We’re nearing the end of 2023 which means you’re probably up to your eyeballs in Christmas madness. Allow me invite you to step away from that and do something that feels exciting as well as productive. Let’s talk about small business goal setting and how you can step into the new year with your best foot forward.
Before we dive head first into small business goal setting let’s get you in a positive headspace. Reflect on this year, look at what went really well, your achievements, what you enjoyed. Take a moment to feel proud of how far you and your small business have come. Think about what you would like to replicate from that and how can you build on these things. Finally think of what wasn’t the right fit, what can you shed as you go into this new year, what isn’t going to serve you going forward?
Now let’s get ready to look forward. Find yourself a quite space, somewhere you can clear your mind and be completely undisturbed and ask yourself this question, what does business success look like in the new year? It can be tempting to blurt out, ‘more money!’ Which is a completely valid goal of course but there’s so many other forms of success so really take the time to think what it looks like for you. Do you want to collaborate with more businesses next year? Add a new service to your offerings? Work less? Work more? Whatever it is, sit with the thought for a while and be sure it lights you up when you visualise it. Once you know what you want you can start small business goal setting!
We’re going to use the S.M.A.R.T approach to small business goal setting.
S - Specific
M - Measurable
A - Achievable
R - Relevant
T - Time bound.
What happens when you apply the S.M.A.R.T method to a goal? Well let’s say your goal is to “book more clients next year”. A fine goal but it could be better. We use the S.M.A.R.T method and change it to “book 20 new clients by June”.
Why do this? Once you have an actual figure to aim to for and a deadline to do it by we can thoroughly asses if the goal has been achieved when we review. If it has, great! We set another, bigger, better goal going forward. If it didn’t work, we can look back at our efforts to figure out what didn’t work and where we could do more. This is the whole point of small business goal setting, to challenge ourselves to push and achieve and then to learn from our shortcomings. It’s not for the faint of heart but it’s the best tool for growth and momentum.
Once you have your goal in mind you can use it to work backwards from to help you plan the road to getting there! Of course marketing is a huge part of getting you to any goal in business! I offer a one to one service where together we look at your goals, the nitty gritty of your business, your current content strategy, your ideal client and work out how we can improve upon it. If this is something you would like to know more about then please reach out to me.
Of course once you’ve finished your small business goal setting you’ll want to be getting out into the world and making sure you’re getting seen! You’ll be in need of professional commercial photography to do this. Take a look at this blog to see what a commercial photoshoot with me looks like!
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