How to set better goals for your business in 2024

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

When it comes to setting goals for your business, I’ve seen and tried all sorts of shapes and sizes. Like many skills as a new business owner, it takes time to develop and find the way that works for you. You will inevitably make some missteps and spend plenty of time discovering all of the ways that most certainly don’t support you. All the time, getting closer to what does.

One of the hardest things to get used to for me, was planning-for-one. I’ve been used to being part of teams, where reaching the goal is a real collaborative effort, with input and contribution from many different people, each responsible for a different aspect of the work. My work was compartmentalised, and the effort that I put in added up to a much bigger outcome. Yes, things fell behind schedule and changed a lot, but even when that happened, we addressed it as a team.

As a solo-business owner I thought it would be easier when I only had myself to account for and had complete flexibility over my time. In fact, I continually found myself over-estimating what I could achieve on my own. Throw in calls with clients, my own time for learning, setting up all the business fundamentals, life-min and kids, meant that I very quickly fell behind on the plan. This left me feeling like I was continually in catch up mode, not knowing what to tackle first and so stretching myself thin, trying to do a bit of everything. I wasn’t progressing towards my goals in the way I wanted, and nor was I gaining an understanding of what the high priority tasks really are.

Now that I have a solid process for setting goals and putting in place a system to support me in meeting them, things feel an awful lot simpler. Still not perfect, but there is a good solid base there that I use on a weekly basis to plan my time and continually review so that the plan stays live.

Doing things this way has allowed me to launch a podcast, plan what I’ll be offering through the year, commit to a weekly writing habit and steadily grow my network of peers, colleagues and clients.

It’s a system that I’m starting to teach my clients and so in this blog post I thought I’d share it with you too.

Pyramid Goals

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: I recommend starting with a theme that puts a simple and clear 'Why?' at the heart of your goal setting. You can also turn this into a mantra for the year .

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? It might be a set of products or services priced well & 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 secondary objectives? This might be creating content, building relationships, developing your offers or business model.

🔼 Layer 3

Goals: Set SMART goals that relate to these three activities. 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. 

This last point is really really important. It’s a test of what is realistic in the time that you have. What will most likely happen is that you realise that you’re trying to squeeze in way too much. At which point, you need to go back and modify.

How does this feel for you? Is it an approach you’d like to try?