Plan for Your Goals

This post comes at the right time for when you should be thinking about the year ahead.

No it’s not Christmas yet, but before you start getting into the festive spirit, it might be a good time to evaluate what you have achieved this year, and to begin looking forward to what you would like to achieve next year.

Something which I find most people don’t do in business, is plan their goals.

Now this might sound really out there, but do you plan for the next 12 months?

If you do, then awesome! You’re doing something that not many business owners are.

If you’re not, then here’s a helping hand to get you started.

Step 1 – It Doesn’t Start With Money

Sit down over the course of one, or many evenings, and make sure your partner or significant other is there too.

Now, write a list of all the things that you want to do in the next 12 months.

Note what I’ve said here – between you and your partner, write a list of all of the things that YOU want to do.

• Holidays
• House renovations or decorating
• Sports or Health goals
• Significant purchases
• Cars
• Savings
• Mortgage overpayments

Whatever takes your fancy, add it to the list.

Now, do the same thing but this time for your business goals.

One key point to remember here is that the goals shouldn’t be monetary, yet. We’ll get to that.

A goal to hit ?1m turnover isn’t really a goal, whereas the reasons that sit behind that might be.

• Employing new staff
• Moving Office premises
• Significant expenditure (it equipment)
• Training courses
• Pay increases for staff
• Any additional Website or marketing costs

The next thing I want you to do is to write these on our downloadable timeline template.

On this plan, you will write the business goals on the top half, and the personal goals on the bottom half. Ensuring you think about what time of year is best for each goal.

Step 2 – The Profit

Now I want you to add up all of these items with their costs.

Done it?

Did you get a scary number?

Not to fear, as now you have some goals in place, everything you do from now on is aimed at reaching your own goals.

The number you’ve got is now the amount in additional profit that your business needs to generate over the next 12 months.

Step 3 – Achieving the Goals

Well now, you know what you want to do, and you know how much it’s going to cost you.

Now it’s time to ease the load a little.

Take the profit figure that you came to on step 2, and look at what it would take for you to reach this figure in business.

You could break the number down into monthly targets.

If you know the average spend of a customer, well now you know how many additional customers you need to find.

One that has worked well for us here at Tekkers is to identify areas of lost productivity.

We discovered that just 15 minutes of unaccounted time each day could equate to up to £30k or lost revenue every year!

Check out my article on quick profit wins to get some ideas on how you can reach those profit goals.