Goal Setting and Planning

Goal setting is an important part of planning your online business and establishing yourself as a credible business. By setting challenging goals, you will find that you are motivated to assertively push your business forward and gain many benefits by accomplishing your mission.

It all starts with understanding what goal setting is all about. Goal setting is the process of creating a plan that is comprised of multiple steps to reach a specific result.

1. The first step is defining the goal you want to accomplish. For example, I want to create an online niche business that produces X products for sale and attracts Y number of visitors and customers monthly.

2. The second step is to create milestones or multiple steps to accomplish that goal. For example, the first milestone may be to research and evaluate effective niche product ideas. The next milestone may be to create a website layout to reflect the niche’s theme. Other milestones will help you achieve your ultimate goal.

3. The third step is to create a process for managing and evaluating progress against milestones to reach your goal. Setting timelines for your milestones will help. For example, conduct and complete niche product research by May 15 may be a milestone. Evaluating your progress will include confirming that you have met your May 15th deadline for completing this work. If you have missed your deadline, you will know that you must be more attentive and aggressive to accomplish your milestones.

With goal setting, keep in mind that you will always have “short term plans” to reach “long-term goals”. This means that interim steps along the way are important to your success for the future. Goal setting is like having a roadmap to your destination.

Think about taking a trip to the beach for a week. If you simply get in your car on Friday and start driving with no clear direction on which highway to take, which direction to drive (Pacific or Atlantic ocean?), and how to get to your hotel, you will have difficulty or may never reach your goal. If you do reach your beach destination and hotel, you may find that your reservation was for Saturday but you arrived on Friday!

However, if you have a clear goal in mind to arrive at Daytona Beach on Saturday, June 12 and stay at the Ritz Hotel, then you can create milestones to reach your goal. You decide whether to drive or fly, purchase an airline ticket if necessary, plan the day you will leave, what to pack, make a hotel reservation, and everything else in between. Your goal of having a fun-filled week at Daytona Beach in June becomes a reality with property planning!

Your business works the same way. Establishing your goal, creating milestones, and measuring progress will help you succeed. You may find that you need to adjust plans along the way to accomplish your goal or you may decide to refine your goals. But the most important thing is that you have a goal and plan.

When it comes to goal-setting, remember:

1. Establish a long-term goal.

2. Create interim milestones that have dates for accomplishment.

3. Measure progress against milestones, keeping the ultimate goal in mind at all times.

4. Make adjustments in milestones as needed to succeed.

Proper goal-setting and management is the road to success when it comes to creating, managing, and maintaining your business.

And remember, “plan your work, and work your plan”!

Goal Setting Worksheet

Goal setting worksheets can be an integral component of your goal-setting strategy. With the proper planning and creation of goals, milestones, and methods of evaluation, your dreams will become a reality much quicker and with greater success. A goal setting worksheet can be an incredible asset in this process, saving you time, money, and effort. Goal setting worksheets are a compilation of all of the actions required to reach a desired result.

Take a look at the goal setting worksheet below to help you with your professional goal setting process. Goal setting worksheets include the milestones to help you accomplish your ultimate goals. Many people refer to goal-setting worksheets as ‘action plans’ since they are filled with actions to be taken towards the accomplishment of a goal. The milestones are considered “short term goals” and they are essential to reaching your long-term ultimate goal towards success.