How I’m approaching goal setting in 2025

Photo by Erik Karits on Unsplash

I sit writing this in the milky daylight of January in northern Scotland, knowing that this is a time of year that many business owners set goals and lay out their plans for the year. (Me included!) ✍🏼

I find that goal setting really perks up the A* student in me and I easily lean into the ambitious side of me that wants to push myself and tap into my potential.

Maybe you’re the same. 🏆

For many of us, as business owners one of the most obvious goals to set is a financial target.

This might look like setting a goal that says “By the end of this year I am going to have achieved an income of £100k from my coaching services”

On the surface, it looks like it ticks all the boxes of good goal setting in that it’s specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. ✅

And so we go for it.

Until the last two years, my experience of this was that I then kept busy doing all the things and hoping that the efforts will pay off. Only to reach the end of the year having fallen way short of the target and questioning where things had gone wrong. 🤷🏼‍♀️

The bit that I failed to really dive into was whether the goal was achievable to me, based on my stage of business, my experience, my network and the resources I had available to me.

Knowing this then allowed me to go on and refine my approach, taking all of this into consideration.

You can read more about what this approach helped me to achieve in my review of 2024. For now, I thought I'd share some more about how it works given that goal setting is a hot topic right now!

The Pyramid Goal System

Imagine your goals for the year laid out as a pyramid. At the peak of the pyramid is the overall aim for your business this year and at the base are the day to day actions that you need to take to achieve that overall aim.

🔼 Pyramid Peak - The Overall Aim

Start with a word of the year that puts a simple and clear 'Why?' at the heart of your goal setting. You can also turn this into a simple mantra.

From that define your overarching aim for the year.

For example, if your word is ‘Growth’ then the overarching aim for the year could be “To create regular, predictable and sustainable income from my business that covers all of my financial needs.”

🔼 Layer 1 - Primary Objectives

What two things do you need to achieve the overall aim?

If we continue the example above, then your two things could be a set of products / services that are priced appropriately & a customer base who need what you are offering.

🔼 Layer 2 - Priorities

What three themes are you going to prioritise in your business in order to meet the primary objectives?

In the example above this would be developing your offers and pricing, building relationships with potential customers and inviting people into your world.

🔼 Layer 3 - Goals

This is where the SMART goals actually come in. Now you know specifically how they support your overall aim and the goals themselves are things that you have control over achieving - they are not subject to the actions of others choosing whether to but or not.

For example, by the end of the year I will have written 30 blog articles.

🔼 Layer 4 - Systems

Create the system that will help you meet these goals and schedule these into your calendar.

For example, block out 2hours every week to write a blog post.

You might need to work back and forth a few times to see whether you actually have the time available to implement all of these systems that support your goals. Most likely first time around, you won’t! And that’s ok. I find that it’s better to underestimate and have a minus set of actions that you can follow through with no matter what. To build trust and knowing that you take action on the things that you’ve said that you will.

Further Support

If you’d like further support then you might want to consider a half day strategy intensive. Together, we’ll sit down and take a zoomed out view of your business to help you see the woods through the trees. You’ll leave with a plan that you feel excited to put into action and one that helps you show up and sell with more ease and less overthinking!