‘People with goals succeed because they know where they are going… It’s as simple as that’

Earl Nightingale.

If you read any good book, website or blog about starting a business you’ll normally find that the section on developing a business plan talks about defining your exit strategy. It can seem odd to many, after all you’re only just starting the business and here you are planning how you’ll leave it. There is however a good reason for considering your exit strategy when writing your business plan, it gives you a picture of where you plan to take the business, in effect it gives you a destination for your journey as an entrepreneur, or as some would call it a goal to aim for.

The fact is people and businesses with goals achieve success far more often than those without goals. Fortunately when it comes to goals it doesn’t what stage your business is at, be it nothing more than an idea or a full blown company it’s never to late. So take a few minutes to read this article and them set yourself some SMART goals. I’m sure you’ll find they help, I certainly do!

What Are SMART Goals?

SMART stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Timely

Specific: This is the what, why and how of the goal. You should clearly document what are you going to do, why are you going to do it and how are you going to do it. Be as precise and clear as possible about what you are going to do. Instead of setting a goal to make money, set the specific goal of making $120,000 per year.

Measurable: Common management wisdom says that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. Try to choose a goal with measurable progress. That way you can see how far you’ve gone and how far you still have to go in order to achieve it. Again be specific “I want to be making $120,000 per year within the next 12 months”. Then establish some criteria against which you can measure your progress towards the goal. Measuring your progress helps keep you on track. If you take the goal of $120,000 per year then that’s $10,000 per month so you can measure your earnings at the end of the month and gauge your progress towards the long term goal.

Achievable: Your goals should stretch you, making you work hard to achieve them, but they should also be realistic otherwise you won’t commit to them. So if you’re currently earning $60,000 per year $120,000 may a good goal that stretches you, $1,000,000 is probably unrealistic and you’ll probably not commit yourself to achieving it.

Relevant: Your goal should be relevant. There’s no point setting a goal for yourself or your business that depends on something over which you have no influence.

Timely: You need to set a clear time and date by which the goal is to be achieved.

More recently it has been suggested that goals should become SMARTER. E standing for Exciting and R standing for Recorded.

Exciting: The goal should excite you, when you’re excited by a goal you’re far more likely to apply yourself to achieving it.

Recorded: By creating a record of a goal you ensure that it’s understood and can’t be forgotten.

Two excellent additions in my view, I certainly find that being passionate about a goal and writing it down vastly increase the chances of me achieving it.

How about you, are your goals SMART or SMARTER? Or even DUMB?

Subscribe:
If you enjoyed this post and would like to be kept updated on future posts, then please Subscribe by Email or subscribe to my RSS Feed.