It sounds harsh to say, but vague resolutions aren’t likely to produce results, and when it comes to business, you need results. Goal setting sounds very corporate, I get that, but it’s just a way of getting really clear on what you want to do. When you know this, the fun/work begins as you can look at the next steps you need to take and map out your entire route to get to where you want to be.

There are lots of ways to set goals and I’d always say that if you have a way that works for you, stick to it. There’s always a new way or new method coming out, but if you have a system that sets out your goal in a clear, specific way that you can act on and start to reverse engineer, then go for it.

How do you know when you arrive if you don’t know where you’re going?

Why does being clear and specific matter? Because if you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, you won’t know when you’ve accomplished it. You also won’t know how to achieve it as there simply isn’t enough detail.

Let’s take the example of turnover. A lot of people want to increase their turnover year on year, that’s a good goal… but that’s not enough detail to help you achieve it. The first question is how much do you want to increase it by? A percentage or an amount? And when do you want to see this increase? By the end of this financial year, the end of the year, or by the end of the month? If you know you want to increase by 5% by the end of the year, you can then start to look at the how. You can ‘run the numbers’ and analyse the products or services that did the best and start thinking about ways to develop these or get them in front of more people. You can look at PR and marketing and assess where your best leads have come from that have created sales, look at other opportunities, and think about how to capitalise on what worked and sack off what didn’t. You can look at the year and think about how much growth you’d like to see each month to stay on track, or if you know that certain quarters will yield the biggest growth, you can capitalise on them.

When you have the bare bones, you can go further

Now you have the start of the plan. And with this, you can also start to explore other areas that will support this goal. Do you have the infrastructure to handle this increase? And if not, what can you do make it so? This could be a question of thinking when you might need to expand your staff, change delivery company, upgrade systems – there are a lot of options here and it’s not something to fear, quite the opposite, it’s something relish. If you’ve thought it through and have a plan, you have a blueprint to stick to. You can check off your milestones and know you’re on track, or see you’ve slipped a bit and come up with ideas to get you back to where you want to be.

Can you change your goal?

One common misconception is that goals are rigid. Yes, I know you should be clear and specific, but I also believe that it’s OK to change goals whenever you need to based on information you receive along your journey. Sticking with this example, what if you realise that the goal of increasing turnover is not increasing profit because one strategy you explored was reducing your prices to increase volume and you thought that would work, but it hasn’t? Change the goal. Make it about profit instead. You’ve learnt from the mistake, and you’ve readjusted.

When you’re the captain of your own ship, you can change direction when you want to… but it’s still vitally important you have a clue where you’re heading to start with, or else you could well find you’re just going around in circles, which isn’t good for anyone.

You've Got This: How to supercharge your business and conquer your goals by Rhea Freeman is published Bloomsbury Business on 16th January 2025 (£16.99)

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