Reimagining Goal Setting: How to set goals in your business that are achievable

Setting goals in business can often feel scary and daunting. I used to struggle with goal setting and felt they added extra pressure if I wasn’t able to achieve them. It made me question whether setting goals was the right thing for me. But what I came to realise as that it wasn’t the goal setting that didn't work; it was the lack of a well-thought-out plan supporting those goals.

Understanding the importance of having goals in your business made me reevaluate how I was approaching them because setting goals isn’t just about achieving them but also the journey of working towards a goal - what you learn and how you grow during the process. If you've found yourself where I used to be, viewing goals as unattainable and overwhelming, then keep reading. Let's explore how breaking down goals can make them feel lighter and more achievable while crafting a solid action plan, I’ve written a blog all about what you need to create an action plan to support your goals, have a read here.

1. Before setting the goals, identify what you really want

What truly matters to you? Before defining your goals, identify your desires. Whether it's more time, increased revenue, or a reduced workload, each requires distinct goals. Being clear and specific on what you want this goal to achieve is so important for the outcome.

2. Next, it’s time to get specific

Once you've got clear on what you want, it's time to specify your goals. For instance, if you aim to work fewer hours, what does that actually look like? Is it transitioning to four-day work week or shortening workdays to five hours?

3. Time to break the goal into stages

This is the biggest shift in goal setting, to make it lighter and less overwhelming, because the reality of shifting to a four-day work week right now might not seem possible if you're currently working 5 full days a week.

So, to make the shift and ability to achieve this goal, fesaible, let’s start with smaller actions that collectively lead to achieving the overarching goal—think of it as creating stages toward your desired outcome. The number of stages may vary depending on the goal, your capacity, and the timeline you've set. Let’s go through an example of breaking a goal into stages:

EXAMPLE BUSINESS GOAL: Go down to a 4 day work week

Stage One:

Reducing the hours you work will impact your revenue, so first decide whether your income should remain the same, increase, or decrease with the transition. If maintaining the current revenue is the goal, the first actions will be exploring options to achieve that within reduced work hours.

Examples include raising prices, introducing new services, or launching digital products.

Stage one actions: Calculate how much you want to increase your prices by and update this across your business, letting existing clients know

Stage Two:

Decide what other ways you want to maintain your revenue that won’t add more time, can you offer new services that take less time than your other services so you can offer more or restrucure existing services to bring you more time.

Stage two action: Review your offers and decide what you’d like to change that increases your revenue and saves you time, then start setting up these changes in the backend of your business

Stage Three:

Launch the newly introduced services

Stage three actions: Make all your changes live on your website with your new service/s, reach out to past clients and let them know, update your socials

Stage Four:

The final stage of this goal, review your marketing strategy with new services

Stage four actions: Now everything is set up that allows you to work a 4 day week and maintain your revenue, review your marketing strategy to make sure you’re booking in the right mix of services so you can work less

This process means each stage is a step towards the goal, allowing you to focus on the stage you’re in, and avoid feeling overwhelmed at the idea of achieving the main goal in one go.

By breaking down your objectives into manageable stages and actions, you not only make them more approachable but also increase the likelihood of success. It's about progress, not just the destination.

Now you’ve broken down your goal into stages it’s time to create an action plan for each stage, check out my blog here with steps to building a solid action plan for your goals.