Your Year - Goal Setting for Your Business and Beyond

"If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else." — Yogi Berra.

The beginning of the year is an important time, not just because most of our books reset and the last digit of the year changes, but because it gives each of us a mental check-in point and an opportunity to reassess ourselves and our lives. As business owners, we often get caught up in the daily grind, and many entrepreneurs are worried about just surviving until the end of the year. But for any organism on earth to survive, it must keep growing. The same applies to businesses - your business must continue growing to survive. To grow our businesses and reach our American Dreams, we must start by reminding ourselves why we're doing it. 

We want to grow our business in this new year, but where do we start? Recent work in the business world and psychological circles has focused on reaching goals. Psychologists have found that those who write down their goals are 33% more likely to achieve or exceed them. So, putting pen to paper or characters to a wordpad is where to start. 

First, Remember Your Purpose

If you've been grinding away for a while, it's easy to feel stuck on the hamster wheel. Now is a great time to step back and remember your "why." Reflect on why you are a business owner or why you want to continue leading this company or division that you find yourself in. Before setting your goals for the year, consider what success means to you and your family. 

Get Real 

When we ask ourselves, "What does success look like?" it's easy to aim for the moon, only to feel discouraged when we don't quite reach the stratosphere. You can achieve your goal, but it takes one step at a time. The "overnight success" stories were truly years in the making. More often than not, there were years of planning, late nights, and long hours before anyone heard of them or before they became the newest darlings of the business community. Although ample experimental data now show that setting high, specific goals can lead to increased persistence and motivation, failing to achieve those lofty goals is likely to result in negative feelings and lower self-esteem.

Get SMART

One of the most essential aspects of the latest psychological research on goal achievement is that goals must be specific and achievable from the outset to enhance success. These are often referred to as "S.M.A.R.T." goals since they are "specific," "measurable," "attainable," "realistic," and bound by a defined "timeframe." With this framework, we can focus on a format to create SMART goals with the greatest chance of success. Using the SMART criteria, it is recommended to establish tiered goals: 

(a) baseline, minimal achievable goal that will keep you moving forward and not just treading water, 

(b) the ambitious goal, which is an advanced realistic goal putting you well on your way to your destination and 

(c) your "big hairy audacious goal" is an achievable, ambitious goal that is straightforward and inspiring and acts as a uniting force for the group, which Jim Collins discusses in his book Built to Last (4).  

Get Moving

“Most ‘impossible’ goals can be met simply by breaking them down into bite size chunks, writing them down, believing them, and then going full speed ahead as if they were routine.” – Don Lancaster

It’s time to act. Tried and true, in his landmark book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill presents a six-step approach for reaching goals:

1.     Clearly state your objective. Clearly express your intended results.

2.     What will you sacrifice? Decide what you are going to offer in return. 

3.     Specify a due date: Clearly state your expected date of success.

4.     Design a specific plan: Create a detailed plan and start straight away.

5.     Write a clear statement. Record the objective, the deadline, your contribution, and the strategy. Napoleon Hill specificizes that you should handwrite this statement. 

6.     Read aloud your statement. Read your prepared declaration aloud twice daily. As you read, see, and believe in your success.

Now, you may ask, "Do I need to handwrite the statement?" and "Do I really need to read it out loud?" Studies have shown that writing notes by hand enhances students' memory performance and recall of the subject (5). Research also indicates that reading information aloud boosts active participation in the memory process, leading to improved long-term memory retention (6). Earl Nightingale, in his audio program “The Strangest Secret," suggests that once you have formulated your goal in your mind, you should write it down on an index card and carry it in your wallet, reading it daily.

Taking this information, in the next week, we recommend that you focus on journaling your goals for the year using the prompts below. You can use this system for your business of course, but we recommend looking at each important facet of your life, including: 

·       Health

·       Relationships

·       Family

·       Career & Life's Purpose

·       Money

·       Adventure

Here are your writing prompts: 

Your Purpose:

·       What is a successful year for you, your business, and your family?

·       How do you measure success? 

·       What makes you excited to get out of bed in the morning and get to work?

Your Goals:

·       What is your baseline goal, the most attainable goal for this year?

·       What is your ambitious goal for the year?

·       What is your BHAG?  

Your Plan: 

·       What is your plan to reach your baseline goal? 

·       Where are you deficient?

·       Where can you improve? Can you move resources to improve your deficits, or can you stop doing what you are doing poorly?

·       What are the first steps that you can start tomorrow? 

·       What can be accomplished this week? This month? This quarter?

So, in the next week: 

1.     Respond to the writing prompts. 

2.     Set Weekly goals.

3.     Schedule your first weekly review; place a weekly hold on this time each week if you can. 

4.     Schedule your first monthly review. 

5.     Schedule your first quarterly review.  

Here's how I have put these strategies into practice in our lives. After setting our yearly goals, we take a few minutes each week to write down our weekly objectives. We chose Sunday evenings before we start preparing for bed. We pull four index cards from my desk drawer, two for each of us. On each card, we write our yearly goals on one side and our weekly goals that align with our yearly goals on the other, then we exchange one card. We carry our cards throughout the week, ideally reading them aloud every morning and reviewing them each night. At the end of the week, we share our yearly and weekly goals, then provide a status update on how we succeeded with our weekly goals from the previous week and how we plan to improve in the coming week. We also create new cards for the next week. And guess what? We’ve seen results. We are understanding and compassionate with ourselves and each other when we don’t accomplish everything we aimed for that week. Still, we continue to encourage one another and ask how we can best support each other in achieving our goals. Some goals are shared, allowing us to plan and strategize together to reach them. Overall, this strategy has produced positive outcomes. Writing the cards each week aligns with scientific data and observed principles of achieving set goals, as our weekly goals are SMART and reiterated; reading the cards daily reinforces our goals and keeps them at the forefront of our minds, and reviewing them with one another weekly holds us accountable, keeps us on track, and, best of all, fosters our connection as we strive to improve ourselves, our lives, and our relationship.

Remember to stay grounded with achievable SMART goals during future goal reviews and goal-setting sessions. We also suggest sharing your goals with a friend, partner, or business associate if you're setting goals for your business, and including them in your weekly or monthly reviews for accountability. Don’t wait. Now is the time for you and your partner to assess your life or business, make plans, and implement them to the best of your ability. Don’t let another year pass by with your dreams slipping away. Start now. Success is waiting!

Citations: 

1) Matthews, G. (2015). Goal Research Summary. Paper presented at the 9th Annual International Conference of the Psychology Research Unit of Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER), Athens, Greece.

2) Hopfner, J., & Keith, N. (2021, September 21). Goal Missed, Self Hit: Goal-Setting, Goal-Failure, and Their Affective, Motivational, and Behavioral Consequences. Frontiers. Retrieved January 7, 2025, from https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.704790/full?utm_source=chatgpt.com ; Front. Psychol., 20 September 2021 Sec. Organizational Psychology; Volume 12 - 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.704790

3) Traugott, J. (2014, August 26). Achieving your goals: An evidence-based approach. MSU Extension. Retrieved January 7, 2025, from https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/achieving_your_goals_an_evidence_based_approach?utm_source=chatgpt.com

(4) Collins, J., & Porras, J. I. (2010, July 6). BHAG – Big Hairy Audacious Goal : Built to Last excerpt. Jim Collins. Retrieved January 8, 2025, from https://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/BHAG.html#articletop ; 

Built to Last is of the companion books to Jim Collins' seminal work Good to Great. I highly recommend anyone in business leadership to read at least Good to Great, but the trilogy Good to Great, Built to Last, and Great by Choice is the base of any great learning about building successful businesses. 

(5) Fagan, A. (2024, February 6). Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Your Brain. Psychology Today. Retrieved January 7, 2025, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evidence-based-living/202402/writing-by-hand-is-good-for-your-brain?

(6) University of Waterloo. (2017, December 1). Reading information aloud to yourself improves memory of materials. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 7, 2025 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171201090940.htm