HOW TO BUILD YOUR BUSINESS CATAPULT + GUARANTEE GOAL ACHIEVEMENT FOR THE NEW YEAR
‘When you aim at nothing, you hit nothing.’
Building a clear vision is an essential step in guaranteeing that you are setting realistic goals which you have the capacity as well as the ability to achieve. As we focus on building your business catapult for the upcoming year, we are going to research three distinct areas:
The Past + Present (What has been going on during the last year?)
The Distant Future (What are your goals for five years down the road?)
The Near Future (What are your goals for one year down the road?)
Using the downloadable worksheet provided below, follow along with the instructions for each section as we help you formulate a clear plan of action for the upcoming year, complete with a schedule of priorities and dependencies, calendared deadlines, and accountability partners.
THE PAST + PRESENT
For the Past + Present section, we will review both your personal and professional life in order to fully understand your current joys and passions, needs and opportunities, as well as possible roadblocks in your life.
Using your worksheet and looking back on the past year and being as specific as possible, follow the exercises below.
FOR BUSINESS
1W. GOING WELL – First off, let’s give you some credit for a job well done. Being as specific as possible, list the top three things that are successful and going well in your WORK life? Consider the follow categories and areas:
Income vs Expenses
Schedule
Client Roster
Marketing
Operations + Systems
Commute
Work Peers + Community
New Business Development
Revenue Streams, Passive Income
Work vs Life Balance
Continuing Education
2W. NEEDS WORK – Next, let’s take a good look at the WORK projects or areas where you would like to see better results or more progress. Being as specific as possible, list the top three things that need improvement in your WORK life? Consider the same WORK categories and areas above. List the most important item as A, second as B, third as C.
3W. JOY + PASSIONS – Your most successful and focused achievements will always come when you are doing work that you wholeheartedly love and look forward to each day. Being as specific as possible, list the top three things in your WORK life that you are excited + passionate about, which bring you JOY on a frequent, perhaps daily, basis.
4W. ROADBLOCKS – While considering your three main WORK areas that ‘Need Work’, and using the list of possible roadblocks below, check the leading roadblocks that are slowing, reducing or blocking you from growing your business and achieving maximum success in your WORK life.
As you select roadblocks, list whether this specific roadblock is slowing your progress with ‘Needs Work’ WORK project(s) A, B, and/or C.
Lack of Time a b and/or c
Distractions _ _ _
Relationships _ _ _
Other Priorities _ _ _
Clients _ _ _
Financial Obligations _ _ _
Destructive Behaviors _ _ _
Lack of Direction _ _ _
Other _____________________ _ _ _
5W. SOLUTIONS – For each of your WORK ‘Needs Work’ projects and your selected roadblocks, determine the solution(s) and next action step(s) that needs to be taken immediately in order to remove or reduce the effects of this roadblock on your progress.
The philosophy of my business coach Todd Holcomb of Grow Mind and Spirit is that calendaring your tasks rather than creating to do lists is always far more successful. This advice has always proven useful for me as well. So, once you have your solutions listed, take out your calendar, and add each solution action item to your calendar in order to guarantee you complete this action step towards removing the roadblock.
Continue reviewing your roadblocks and using your calendar to take action to remove them until you no longer have the issue(s).
EXAMPLE:
If ‘Lack of Time’ is one of the roadblocks listed, as it often is for many of us, then the possible Solution Action Steps would be to:
1- Read the ‘Time Tracker Blog’ on The Business Movement Website
2- Review and remove unnecessary items from my current priorities list and calendar.
6W+P. FREE TIME – Before embarking on a new set of goals, we must consider how much free time we have in our current WORK + PERSONAL schedules to take on new projects, often having to clear responsibilities off our current priorities list. In this section, using your previous two weeks as a guide:
Make a note of how much free time you currently have available in your weekly schedule in order to add in new projects.
Scan your current calendar and responsibilities to see if there are specific areas or tasks which need to be removed or adjusted in order to make better use of your time, while freeing up time and energy for new projects.
After completing this clean-up in your current calendar, what would be your new estimate for hours available each week to add in new future projects?
* If you feel that you need additional assistance with understanding your current schedule and freeing up time for new projects, I recommend following the instructions in The Business Movement’s Time Tracker Blog.
FOR PERSONAL
1P. GOING WELL – Being as specific as possible, list the top three things that are successful and going well in your PERSONAL life? Consider the follow categories and areas:
Finances
Relationship(s)
Friends + Family
Work vs Life Balance
Health + Fitness
Hobbies
Home
Travel
Personal Growth
2P. NEEDS WORK – Being as specific as possible, list the top three things that need improvement in your PERSONAL life? Consider the same PERSONAL categories and areas above. List the most important item as A, second as B, third as C.
3P. JOY + PASSIONS – Being as specific as possible, list the top three things in your PERSONAL life that you are excited + passionate about, which bring you JOY on a frequent, perhaps daily, basis.
4P. ROADBLOCKS – While considering your three main PERSONAL areas that ‘Need Work’, and using the list of possible roadblocks below, check the leading three roadblocks that are slowing, reducing or blocking you from growing your business and achieving maximum success in your PERSONAL life.
As you select roadblocks, list whether this specific roadblock is slowing your progress with ‘Needs Work’ PERSONAL project(s) A, B, and/or C.
Lack of Time
Distractions
Relationships
Other Priorities
Clients
Financial Obligations
Destructive Behaviors
Lack of Direction
Other: _____________________
5P. SOLUTIONS – For each of your PERSONAL ‘Needs Work’ projects and your selected roadblocks, determine the solution(s) and next action step that needs to be taken immediately in order to remove or reduce the effects of this roadblock on your progress.
Once you have your solutions listed, take out your calendar, and add each solution action item to your calendar in order to guarantee you complete this action step towards removing the roadblock.
Continue reviewing your roadblocks and using your calendar to take action to remove them until you no longer have the issue(s).
DISTANT + NEAR FUTURE
FOR BUSINESS
1. DISTANT FUTURE – Let’s start our DISTANT future vision and goals work with looking five years down the road. Describe in vivid detail what two events or achievements would represent a successful five years for your business.
* Keep in mind that it may be important to include or consider the ‘Needs Work’ areas from your ‘Past + Present’ brainstorm when building your distant and near future goals.
2. NEAR FUTURE – Now keep those same two distant achievements in mind, as you describe in vivid detail what two NEAR future events or achievements would represent a successful one year of work for your business and help in leading you to your distant goals.
* If you feel like you have more than two possible achievements for your NEAR future goals, then I want you to select the two events which would have the largest ‘bang for the buck’ return on investment for you this year.
3. MACRO-STEPS – For each of your NEAR FUTURE achievements, list up to four main macro-steps that need to take place in order to achieve these goals. List these macro-steps in order by priority level as well as dependencies.
EXAMPLE: If your one year achievement is to increase your monthly income by $2000, then three possible MACRO-STEPS could be:
Raise your rates
Maximize your client roster/schedule
Add additional revenue streams
4. MICRO-STEPS – For each macro-step, list up to three micro-step priorities that you must complete in order to complete the macro-step. List these micro-steps in order by priority level as well as dependencies.
EXAMPLE: If your macro-step is to add additional revenue streams, three possible MICRO-STEPS could be:
Survey clients as to which additional products or services they need
Set up an Amazon Affiliates page to sell fitness products from your website
Schedule meetings with possible partnering businesses to discuss referral rewards agreements
5. TIME ESTIMATES – For every micro-step listed, estimate the number of hours needed to complete the task.
6. DEADLINES – For every micro-step, list a deadline for completion of the work. You must keep the following ideas in mind when coming up with successful deadlines:
How many hours of week did you estimate you have free to work on new tasks?
Of these free weekly hours, how many of these hours are you committing to work projects vs personal projects?
Use your micro-step time estimates, priorities and dependencies to estimate correct deadlines.
7. CALENDAR IT! – Now for the most important steps, we need to CALENDAR everything in order to keep you on track!
Using your calendar and/or task management software, list every micro-step deadline on your calendar with a REMINDER ALARM.
On a weekly basis, schedule the exact times that you will be using each week to work on these new projects for the allotted amount of time.
* My leading two suggestions for task management software:
Reminders, a very simple product that is standard on Apple products
Asana, a free software that is EXCELLENT for organizing your work as well as sharing tasks among a team of people
FOR PERSONAL
Follow the same seven WORK steps above when filling out your personal future goals and achievements.
QUARTERLY REASSESSMENTS
In order to help in guaranteeing that your plan is successful and to allow time for tweaks, redesigns and of course changes throughout the year, use your calendar to schedule yourself a block of time for a QUARTERLY REASSESSMENT near the end of March, June, September, and December. (i.e. An afternoon or full day just for you to focus on biz dev) In each of these quarterly check-ins, walk through your game plan, deadlines, and calendar using most of the same steps described throughout this blog, in order to adjust the plan and continuing moving forward towards your annual goals.
ACCOUNTABILITY
You know yourself better than anyone does, as long as you are able to be honest about that knowledge. What will YOU need to put in place in order to guarantee that you stay accountable to this plan and goals? For some of you, simply monitoring your work and updating your calendar will do the trick. Perhaps others will need to link up with a friend, work with a mentor or maybe even hire a coach. Whatever works best for you, now is the time to make these arrangements.
Good luck this year and I will plan on hearing from you in twelve months to see how things went. If I can help in any way between now and then, do not hesitate to reach out to me.
#YouGotThis
