How to Crush Goals like the Doer You're Destined to Be

If you’re new here, my name is Nia Lewis and I’m a business coach, content creator, and educator. I help entrepreneurs achieve the clarity and focus necessary to be successful in business. I am so excited to have you here and by joining this community for entrepreneurs, it is my goal to connect you with resources that will help you be more successful in entrepreneurship.

As a business coach, I focus on the whole person. I provide practical business advice, but I also share self-improvement content to help you become the best version of yourself for your business. So, if this sounds interesting enough to you, subscribe to my podcast, and my YouTube channel so I can continue to connect you with helpful resources.

This week I want to share some tips with you about how to set strategic goals. Quite often, I talk to entrepreneurs who get stuck in the visionary stages of entrepreneurship. They dream about what they want to accomplish, but can’t figure out how to do anything about it.

Dreamers have great ideas, but seem to lack the direction necessary to get their ideas off the ground. I have been there.

If you feel like you’re stuck in the dreaming stage of your business idea, I want to give you some tools that will help you break free from this day dreaming stage and cultivate the success you know you’re capable of.

1. BE SPECIFIC: If you have an idea/goal/dream that you can’t seem to get moving on, it’s probably not specific enough. How can you take action if you don’t really know what you need to do? Your goal needs to be well defined, and clear.

A general goal would be, “I need to increase sales.” A specific goal would be, “I need to increase the quality of the social media content I share so I can attract target customers who may be interested in purchasing my products.”

2. MAKE IT MEASURABLE: After you get specific about what you need to do, you need to figure out what criteria you will use to measure your progress. Dreamers get frustrated and throw in the towel when nothing seems to be going right. Doers measure their progress so they can see exactly where there is room for improvement, and then take action to get things back on track. This is a matter of being calculated and strategic.

Here is how I would make the example goal I wrote above more measurable: “Every week, I aim to increase engagement by 10%, driving 15 new leads to my website each day.”

3. IS IT ACHIEVABLE? Your goal needs to be achievable and attainable. Sometimes, we create goals for ourselves without even having the resources in place to succeed. In this way, we set ourselves up for failure before we even begin. In deciding whether or not your goal is attainable, ask yourself:

• Do I have the resources and capabilities to achieve the goal? If not, what am I missing?

• Have others done it successfully before? What did they do?

Building on the goal above: "To achieve this goal, I need to implement a social media scheduling tool to make sure content is going out at optimal times every day, and I also need to conduct audience analysis research to figure out what’s trending in my industry that my audience would engage with. I have determined that I have access to a scheduling tool, and research tools on the internet. I have also determined that I need to find a mentor who has experience increasing sales using social media marketing.”

4. IS IT REALISTIC? Your goals must be realistic in that they can be realistically achieved given the resources you have available to you and time. If you want to take your business from 0 to six figures in the next 3 months, and you just started yesterday that may not be realistic. Creating unrealistic goals leads to discouragement.

To determine whether or not your goal is realistic, ask yourself:

• Is the goal realistic and within reach?

• Is the goal reachable given the time and resources?

• Are you able to commit to achieving the goal?

5. MAKE IT TIMELY: Your goals should be time-bound. I would recommend giving yourself a start date and a projected date of completion. If your goal is not time constrained, there will be no sense of urgency and motivation to achieve the goal. Does your goal have a deadline? By when do you want to achieve your goal? It’s helpful to create a timeline of milestones to keep you on track, especially if you have determined that your goal is something long term that you will work toward over several months, or even years.

You’ll see that these goal setting techniques above spell out the acronym SMART. It’s time to get SMART about how you pursue your ambitions. I hope these tips help you become more intentional about your business goals.

I want to leave you with a quote today by best selling author Sarah Ban Breathnach: “The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.”

I hope you have a great week and continue to move onward, upward, and forward. I will be back next week with another episode. Until next time.