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Achieving Success – Goal Setting As you start your Internet business, or even if you need help running your business successfully, you can benefit greatly by setting goals and sticking to them. Before you start to plan your business, think of the reasons why you are starting it, and the results you plan to achieve. Try to map these out before you get started to give you an idea of how you can reach your goals in an efficient way. Goal setting is very similar to writing out a business plan for your company. In fact, you can look at your goals as a roadmap for your business plan. You will be able to see what you expect to achieve and then you can begin to formulate ideas to make it happen. Step #1 – Forming Your Goals Instead of just staring at a blank piece of paper and having nightmarish flashbacks to high school English classes, try to think for a moment of your dreams for your business. Do you plan to retire at 35 as a millionaire? Do you just want to have fun and make some spare cash on the side? Try to think of the reasons why you are starting your business in the first place. Step #2 – Being Reasonable So maybe retiring as a millionaire at 35 is a little out of reach. There is no point in setting a goal that will be impossible to achieve. Start small and set reasonable goals at first. These goals can be as small as learning html to design your company’s website or as large as having 1000 customers the first month. Step #3 – Don’t underachieve On the same token as overachieving, you can do yourself a disservice by underachieving as well. While you may feel good about getting through all of your goals right away, you won’t experience the personal growth and feeling of accomplishment that comes with setting goals that may just a little out of reach at first. Step #4 – Laying out a path Once you have decided what your goals are, how best can you achieve them? Do you need to invest more of your capital into advertising or do you need to spend more time on the smaller goals? If you know what you plan to do ahead of time, you can portion out your resources accordingly. Step #5 – Goal Setting In Advance As you set up your goals for your business in general, you can break them up into 6 month or one year increments. Where would you like your business to be in 6 months? Two years? Try to plan so that you will have definite goals for each portion of the year. If you are in a seasonal business, this can be very effective for planning your busy season ahead of time. Step #6 – Making your Goals a reality Once you have laid out the path to your goals you can begin taking a look at the best way to make them happen. Look at your goal list as an itinerary. Each goal is an important road marker along the way to your ultimate destination. This will give you an incentive to keep going, even when things are at their darkest. Step #7 – Don’t Get Discouraged If you do not meet your goals as you planned, don’t get discouraged and immediately give up. Instead, look at your list and see if you overachieved in some areas, or didn’t work hard enough to meet your goals in other areas. This is a learning experience, not a lesson in failure. Each time you fall, pick yourself up and retool your goals. Before long, you will have started to make progress in achieving these goals. Step #8 – Starting Small If you are new to goal setting or maybe just a little incredulous of the process, start by setting just a few goals. Keep these goals in a conspicuous place in your office or by your computer. Each time you look at them, you will be reminded of your goals and that might be the little nudge you need to start making them happen. Goal setting is for everyone, not just for the “inspirational” types. Try it for yourself and see what kind of progress you can make in a very short time.
This article was posted on August 16, 2005
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