A New Way to Look at Your Goals This Year

If you’re like me, you have probably spent a fair amount of time over the years thinking about your business goals, maybe even going so far as to write them down and break them into weekly and monthly milestones.

I cannot begin to tell you the number of planners and calendars and white boards I have bought over the years… and then thrown away after finding them (completely blank) months later.

What I found over the years was that no matter how detailed I got about writing down my business goals, most of my time every day was spent on planning and preparation to meet those goals.

I was busy all the time. I always had about a million things on my to-do list. But no matter how many hours a day I spent on my business, or how many tasks I crossed off my list, I still fell short of my sales goals.

I usally hit burnout way before I hit my goals. Something had to change.

It was a journaling prompt, of all things, that completely changed the way I ran my business. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you to start journalling - that’s not the key to this idea :)

The journaling prompt was to make a list of everything you do in your business every day, and rate each task on one criteria;

Will this task generate sales today? (ie. Will you actually get money in your account as a result?)

That’s it.

Once you have that list, you will get a very clear picture of how likely you are to meet your sales goals, because if you’re not doing something off that list every single day you’re probably filling your time with busywork like I was.

You will know what your priority should be every single day, and you will be able to look back at your week/month and know WHY you did or didn’t reach your sales goals.

At the time that I did this exercise, I was running my handmade retail store and DIY Studio - and I only ended up with TWO things that I KNEW would actually generate sales.

It was eye opening to say the least.

This idea works because once you’re aware, there is no way to fool yourself into thinking that you are “busy” or “hustling” to get sales, because most likely you’re not spending any time on activities that reliably result in cold hard cash.

Take 2 minutes right now and make your list. Remember, to make the list the task has to more often than not, result in an actual sales transaction. (So unless you are very strategic and intentional, posting on social media is not going to count.)

Don’t just brush this off, take the time to actually think about it - it could change the course of your entire year.