How to Setup Goals for the Future of Your Business

9 Steps to Setup Goals for the Future of Your Business

The end of the year can often be seen as a new beginning for an entrepreneur and small business generally. When we congratulate someone on the coming new year, we wish more happiness, more success, improvements than last year, etc. Each new year, start with the definition of the goals we want to achieve.

But, congratulations as alone will not give you the results that you want to achieve next year. The results as better next year will be a reality only if you know what you want to achieve from the beginning of the year.

On the other side, achieving is based on clearly defined goals. But, again, you can’t take this as a final because clear goals, perfect goals, or supers super perfect goals will not guarantee the achievement of something you wish to achieve.

The next big thing in achieving what you want to achieve is action.

However, we need to start from the beginning, simply because the actions are consequences of clearly defined goals. It’s not that you will not take actions without goals, but probably your actions will be unsystematically, inadequately, and something very useless for your business for the following year.

I want to share some different approaches to defining your goals for the future.

1. Close your eyes and look into the future.

Think about your desires or whatever you want. Dream, and think where you want to be at the end of next year, what you want to do and how do you want to do what you want to do. Don’t think about your environment. Don’t think about possible obstacles. You want your brain to be free, enabling you clearly to see yourself in the future.

2. Describe what you have seen in previous step

Take a piece of paper, Evernote, or classical notebook to describe what you have seen in the previous step. Feel free to write without any prejudice. You’re the most important. The others are not important at this stage. In this step, you want a written explanation about how you see yourself in the future.

3. Leave what you have written in the previous step and relax.

Now is the perfect time to relax and leave everything you have written in the previous step. Go out and drink coffee with your friends. Watch a good movie. Relax to the maximum without thinking about the job that you have already finished.

4. Come back to your work and start reading.

Now, after big relaxing moments, read what you have already written. Do you think you have something to add or change? If you think you should also do something more, add it to the list, leave everything again, and start relaxing.

5. Re-read again, but now with a pen in your hand.

When you review your next year again, underline everything you think will be most important for you. For example, I want to earn more money, go on vacation there and there, hire such and such people, etc. Be careful to underlining only those sentences that represent your wishes related to your vision for next year.

6. Give a structure to everything you have on a list.

Take all sentences that you have underlined in the previous step and write them in a table column. On a piece of paper in the first column, write all those sentences and write the second column headings as potential goals for the future.

7. Transform these sentences into goals.

In the second column, for each sentence of the first column, write a goal. Be careful when you write your potential goals to be SMART goals.

8. In the third column, set goals priorities.

If you find too many goals for you from this exercise, your task is to prioritize them. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you will have too many goals that will lead you to lose focus and ultimately fail to achieve many of them.

9. Select the top three most priority goals for the future.

Finally, select the top three priorities for your next year. Maybe you will need five or more, but for the best focus, according to my experience, the top three are the best way.

You’ve done a great job. From your vision, you come to concrete goals. Next, you need to make concrete projects and tasks that will lead to the achievement of that goals.

Let’s make the new year to be your most successful year ever.