Rhea Freeman is a business coach and mentor, and author of You’ve Got This, a book all about how to supercharge your business, achieve your goals, and overcome the blocks that stop you. Here, she shares tips around how to grow your business by setting good goals, and how to expand the process to create a roadmap you can follow.

It sounds very corporate, I know, but goals really can make or break a business. Why? Because without them, you don’t know what you’re aiming for. And if you don’t know where you’re aiming, how do you know how to get there or if you’re even heading in the right direction?

For most people, the goal is probably to ‘make more money’, but this isn’t a goal. This is a vague notion, a statement, or maybe even a dream. How much more money is more? Is it £5 or is it more than that? And how long are you allowing yourself to do this?! Vague doesn’t help you when you set goals, being specific does.

Creating a blueprint for success

Let’s take a different idea, let’s say you want to launch one of your products into a new market by the end of the year. Yes, it’s a big goal, but from this information, you can start to create a blueprint. You know you need to:

  • Research that new market - who are your competitors? How are their products different to yours?
  • Who’s your new customer? Do the work - create a customer avatar/s so you know exactly who you’re aiming your product at.
  • Marketing - it might be the same product, but marketing to different markets can involve many new things from new packaging and design to wording, branding, and more. How can you find out what works well for this market?
  • Where can you go and learn more? Trade shows? Focus group? Mentor?
  • Who can you follow that’s doing a great job? Research brands that are doing well in the space and learn from them.
  • Best time to launch? Depending on the industry, is there a time that’s good to launch? When do established brands do it and why? 

… and there’s plenty more to ask…

However, when you know what you want to do, you can ask the questions and you can plan when and how you’re going to do each step, creating a pathway to get there and a time scale for each micro goal on the list.

This idea can work for anything - it’s simple to do and I’d very much recommend pen, paper, and some free time to keep asking questions until you have that clear path and those steps you need to take.

Long-term vision: Thinking beyond the next year

One extra little point, when you’re thinking of what you want to achieve, you don’t have to think ‘just’ a year ahead. Maybe your ultimate goal is to sell your company in five years, that’s fine too. Apply all the detail you need to this and start to break down those steps you need into yearly, quarterly and monthly goals… how do you know you’re on the right track? What extra advice do you need to make this happen?

Dream as big as you like, set exciting goals that give you the motivation to keep going, but also set realistic time limits and break these big chunks down to make them achievable and you’ll do amazing things!

 

Find Rhea's book, You've Got This, on Bloomsbury and Amazon!

Read Rhea's previous blog on Tiny Box Company, How to start your own business, and check out more blogs from Tiny Box Company here.