Goal Setting for Entrepreneurs: How to Set Smart Goals & Accomplish Them

Want to know the secret of getting your goals accomplished?? I’ve been fortunate to work with THOUSANDS of entrepreneurs. As a practicing attorney, business coach and mentor. And when you’re that kind of trusted advisor, you see the good, the bad, and the fugly. When you’re a lawyer, you see deep inside businesses – the stuff most business owners do not share with anyone else, including their spouse. You learn quickly to spot what’s working and what’s deeply broken. And I’ve found there are 3 simple secrets to smart goal setting and to getting your goals accomplished. Of course, setting smart goals is what actually moves the needle in your business and leads to real growth. Whether you run a consulting business, you’re a life coach, you’re a financial advisor, or a dog walker, or you sell those annoying little fidget spinners that just seem to be everywhere all of a sudden (seriously, where did they come from?), if you want to be smart about goal setting and set smart goals you will follow through on and accomplish, it really boils down to 3 simple things. If you can nail these 3 things, you can accomplish nearly anything. Ready? Here they are.

#1 – Make Smart Choices

Do this, not that. First and foremost, you need to make the correct choices about what to focus on, and when. Sound simple? It’s not. What’s so hard about this is it changes. What you’re doing today at your current stage in business may be the exact WRONG thing to do 3 months from now, when you’re at a different stage of business. And guess what? Just thinking hard doesn’t help you figure out what you need to do now. You need a mentor and you need to surround yourself with others who have done what you want to do. It is CRITICAL that you not try to go it alone. I see a lot of entrepreneurs who are pounding away working on the wrong stuff at the wrong time. Like the consultant I talked to a few weeks ago who had been struggling to get his first client for over 6 months and told me he was spending all of his time creating an overly complex online marketing funnel with a leadmagnet and complex email marketing drip funnel. (That sound you hear is me banging my head against the desk.) No! When you haven’t gotten a single client, you need a complex online marketing funnel like you need a hole in the head. A complicated online marketing funnel is great – when you are scaling and want to turn cold leads into warm leads and into buyers. Not when you need to get your first few clients. When you are struggling to get clients, you need to call up the people who already know, like and trust you, figure out what burning pains and challenges they have, and create an offer that solves those problems that they can’t resist. That’s it. You need to be the lemonade stand offering a delicious cold glass of lemonade to someone who just marched through the desert in 100 degree heat.

#2 – Focus

Once you’ve figured out #1, then you need to drill down and focus. There will always be new ideas, new strategies, new groups, new organizations, new this, new that, etc. etc. Entrepreneurs tend to be drawn to the new, fun, shiny, exciting because there is excitement in newness. But if you spend all your time talking about, researching and building these “new things,” you will achieve nothing and you will run out of time and money. So you need to strip out everything ELSE out. Your job is to move in the direction of spending more and more of your time on the #1 thing that produces the best results in your business, and delegating everything else which you are not as good at to others who ARE good at it. As you move more towards your greatest strengths, your business will benefit. Because you are doing what you are best at, you will see greater results. I’m convinced that most businesses which fail are brought down not because the founder is a bad business person, but because they didn’t get away from the thousand things they should not be doing so that they could focus more on what they are best at. 

#3- Be Consistent

Finally, once you’ve gone through the goal setting process and made smart choices about your smart goals, and then you’ve drilled down and focused on those goals (cutting out or delegating everything else), then you need to be consistent and to keep doing what is working again and again and again. This is HARD. So, so many entrepreneurs I know can’t do it. Most entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs because they can’t stand the monotony of having a job and having to do the same things over and over again. Then once they build a business that does some things well, they don’t want to keep doing those things again and again because it would take them back to the monotony they fled in the first place. There’s the rub. It’s like a compulsion. An entrepreneur finds something that works, then they are drawn like a moth to a flame to some shiny new strategy that is unproven, but MIGHT work. (And might not). We have a saying at Rise25, and it’s double down on what works. Like Dr. Scot Gray, whose story I shared a few weeks back. We helped Scot generate $1.6 million in annual recurring revenue for his business (at least) in about 60 days by partnering with him to do a half day workshop which was attended by just 8 people. 8 people, 5 hours = $1.6 million in annual recurring revenue. Pretty phenomenal results, right? Hear from Scot in his own words here about how it happened:

 

  The funny thing was, after that happened, we talked to Scot about doing the workshop again a few months later. At first, he said he had a speaking gig that conflicted. So he couldn’t do it. So what do you think is the right thing to do? Here are your choices: (a) Attend new, speculative speaking gig which *might* generate revenue, or (b) repeat a strategy that generated $1.6 million in annual recurring revenue in a short time frame. It’s a no brainer, right? (Scot wisely decided to turn down the speaking gig and do another workshop with us.) The truth is, these 3 things sound simple, but they are easier said than done. And you need the support of someone else to make sure they get done. This is why my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weisz and I created Rise25, where we work with business owners to scale up and move away from trading hours for dollars. If you are ready to move away from solely “one on one” client work and move towards more leveraged “one to many” offerings, head over to Rise25 and you can learn more about what we do.

Sponsor: Rise25

Today’s episode is sponsored by Rise25 Media, where our mission is to connect you with your best referral partners, clients, and strategic partners. We do this through our done for you business podcast solution and content marketing. 

Along with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weisz, we have over 18 years of experience with B2B podcasting, which is one of the best things you can do for your business and you personally. 

If you do it right, a podcast is like a “Swiss Army Knife” – it is a tool that accomplishes many things at once. It can and will lead to great ROI, great clients, referrals, strategic partnerships, and more. It is networking and business development; and it is personal and professional development which doubles as content marketing

A podcast is the highest and best use of your time and will save you time by connecting you to higher caliber people to uplevel your network. 

To learn more, go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]

To learn more, book a call with us here

Check out Rise25 to learn more about our done-for-you lead generation and done-for-you podcast services. 

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